The Tractor 

and its influence upon 
the agricultural im- 
plement industry 



By barton W. CURRIE 
Of the Editorial Staff of 
The Country Gentleman 



A reprint of a series 

of articles 

ivhich appeared in 

The Country Gentleman 



PHILADELPHIA 

THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
1916 






Copyright, 1916 

Curtis Publishing Company 

Philadelphia 



JUL -5 1916 
M /OJL 
ICI,A431741 



FOREWORD 

THIS IS, we believe, the first com- 
plete story of that vast business, 
the manufacture and sale of agricul- 
tural implements and farm tractors. It 
first appeared serially in The Country 
Gentleman. 

To the business farmer, implements 
and machinery are of primary impor- 
tance. It was as a part of its service 
to the progressive farmer that The 
Country Gentleman undertook the 
task of gathering and presenting this 
material. 

The Country Gentleman is pecu- 
Harly the publication of the business 
farmer. It is national, it is weekly, it 
covers the entire country. It touches 
on all crops and all agricultural topics, 
and always from the point of view of 
the man who farms to get back out of 
the land more than he puts into it. 

Within the past year there have 
been two developments which have 



made it more important than ever that 
all the facts about this implement in- 
dustry be brought together and given 
thorough consideration. 

One is the rapid development of the 
farm tractor, which is having consid- 
erable effect upon methods of manu- 
facturing and selling all implements. 

The other is the increased agitation 
for shorter retail credits, a reform 
which would have far-reaching effect 
upon the implement dealer and the ser- 
vice which he renders to the farmer. 

It has been the purpose of The 
Country Gentleman to treat these 
vital topics in such way as to assist 
toward a wider and more economical 
distribution of farm machinery. 

THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

Philadelphia, June, 1916 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PART I PAGE 

I On Time I 

II The Slaughter of the Innocents — Then the 

Tractor 9 

III Plows 18 

IV Senseless Diversification 28 

V Legless Heroes as Mechanicians 34 

VI Squeezing Out the Jobber 41 

VII Elaborate Systems of Merchandising 49 

VIII The Long Credit Spectre 55 

IX Auto-mania on the Farm 63 

X A ^200,000,000 Burden 71 

XI The Sins of the Dealer 79 

XII Lack of Quality or Price Standards 86 

XIII Sir James, Jim and No-' Count Jimmy. ... 93 

XIV A Hoosier Who Woke Up loi 

XV The Farmer's Elusive Cash iii 

XVI The New Get-Together Epoch 115 

XVII How the Bankers May Help 123 

PART II 

I A Mighty Industry in the Making 131 

II The Big Tractor Boom Collapse, and Why 137 

III A Modern Miracle in Selling for Cash. . . . 145 

IV How the Miracle Was Brought About. ... 150 

[vH] 



CHAPTER PAGE 

\^ V Tractors are Not for the Physically Unfit. i6o 

VI Visualizing the Tractor Market i66 

VII Knowledgeof Farm Management Essential 173 
Ji^VIII The Great Selection Problem for the 

Farmer 179 

-ViX Shall the Tractor Fit the Farm or the Farm 

Fit the Tractor 187 

X Design, Parts, Service — The Big Little 

Things 193 

XI Building for Service 199 

^i<XII The Horseless Farm 206 

XIII Government Selection 214 

XIV No Fixed Rules to Guide 223 



[ viii ] 



M' 



On Time 

ILLIONS in junk on the farms of America. 
Waste millions! Who's to blame? The farmer, 
partly — but not wholly. The man who made 
these miracle-working implements that have been cast 
on the scrap-pile long before their time must shoulder 
his share of responsibility. Not so much because of the 
way he contrived these wonder-tools as because of the 
way he sold them. 

Let us focus on one of innumerable cases. Here's 
Farmer Jim Average Jones; a rather likely looking 
place he's got, but what about that pile of junk in the 
barnyard ? 

Once it was a mower. It came up from the dealer's 
looking like a bridegroom. Ma and the kids came out 
and shaded their eyes from the glare of the paint. 

Now look at it — and it has just been paid for! The 
junk-man is coming up tomorrow in that spring-halt 
old wagon of his to carry it off to his scrap-iron ceme- 
tery. He'll trade in a new cookstove for it, and next 
spring Jim Average Jones will go down to the dealer's 
and get a new mower. 

That's all he cares about it. That poor old mower 
is the product of a great industry, but that doesn't 
seem to interest Jim. 

[I] 



The American farmer buys a plow or a planter or a 
corn sheller or a mower or a side-delivery rake or a 
silage cutter. It works to his satisfaction or it doesn't. 
He got it from the dealer on credit, and in the course of 
time he may pay for it. 

As the majority of farmers size up the farm im- 
plement industry, tools either work or don't work. If 
they work the incident is closed, and in the course of 
time the farmer pays for them. Generally he pays for 
them after all the shiny paint and gaudy veneer have 
worn off — not a great while before Bill Binks, the 
junkman, comes round to trade a new cookstove for 
it. It looks so cheap and scrappy when Binks carts it 
off that the farmer is naturally sore at having to pay 
for it as if it were new. 

But the honest farmer pays for it, nevertheless, after 
he has cashed in his crop, and the dealer in turn pays 
the manufacturer. The manufacturer in his turn buys 
some more raw material with which to manufacture 
other implements. 

The sort of purchaser who has had good service from 
his tools doesn't give a thought to the manufacturer or 
his problems or his troubles. To him the source of 
production is some indefinite nowhere just as vague 
as the mythical workshop of Santa Claus. The other 
sort of purchaser, who has bought shoddy equipment 
that didn't work, or just fairly good stuff that was not 
sufficiently foolproof, as the manufacturer would say, 
does give a thought or two to the source of production. 
He whines that he has been stung, gouged, robbed by 
a trust or some little cousin of a trust. He takes his 
howl to the dealer and tells him he'll be darned if he'll 

[2] 



pay. He calls the dealer names and the dealer retorts. 
It was an open-account transaction, and the dealer 
has no documentary proof of purchase. They bicker 
and threaten each other and at last they go to law 
about it. In the course of the suit the dealer may go 
bankrupt and the farmer may move. The lawyers in 
the case have their fees and that is all the real money 
that passes. All the manufacturer gets out of it is a 
few vain regrets. 

Indeed, the manufacturer doesn't appear in the 
matter save as a remote greedy monster who turns out 
tools from some smoky urban lair. The defendant's 
lawyer may draw a caricature of him and embellish it 
with lurid misrepresentations. Nor does the dealer's 
counsel make kindly mention of the manufacturer. It 
is a case of the poor downtrodden farmer versus the 
just-as-poor downtrodden dealer. The manufacturer 
has no definite shape in the matter. He isn't familiar 
enough to anybody to be known by his first, middle, or 
family name. He really doesn't exist, so why bother 
about him? 

The American farmer is buying some ^200,000,000 
worth of farm tools a year, and it is estimated that our 
farms are today stocked with about a billion and a half 
dollars' worth of implements. They are the best farm 
implements manufactured on the globe. They repre- 
sent Yankee ingenuity at its highest, revolutionizing 
Yankee ingenuity. The evolution of our farm imple- 
ments has accomplished one of the marvels of two 
centuries. In 1830 we expended three hours and three 
minutes of human labor to produce one bushel of 
wheat. Now, thanks to mechanized efficiency, we cut 

I3] 



the fundamental processes of production down to 
approximately eight minutes per bushel. 

Every farmer who has sat in at a farm-implement 
lecture has heard this. In recent years the achieve- 
ment has been vitalized on the moving-picture screen. 
First you are shown an undernourished, bullet-headed 
ninety-nine per cent naked Egyptian or Syrian fellah 
guiding a vest-pocket wooden plow over the dirt and 
scratching up an inch or so of soil from beneath the 
surface. This pitiable prehistoric chap is plowing at 
the rate of an acre or so a fortnight, and in the course of 
time he will cut by hand about eight bushels — if the 
gods are kind — of wheat, and a little later you will see 
his grandmother, his mother, his wife and all the kith 
and kin that swarm the family hut threshing out the 
grain with some things that resemble slapsticks. Still 
later you will see them milling it in stone cuspidors and 
then concocting it into loaves of durable and enduring 
bread. 

Having marveled at a reel or so of this you next 
glimpse the modern tractor and gang-plows at work 
on the virgin prairies, followed by harvesters, binders, 
threshers, and so on. There is a baffling array of 
machinery, each separate contrivance performing its 
ingenious function, cutting labor costs and raising the 
vocation of the farmer from the slavish drudgery of the 
days of peasant serfdom to the dignity of a scientific or 
professional calling. 

At least, so you may read the pictures if you are 
endowed with imagination. It is a skillful selling argu- 
ment and it is a page of American history that is 
mighty important to understand. It is the secret of 

[4] 



why the man power of the American farmer is higher 
than the man power of any other farmer in the world, 
not excepting the European farmers with their meth- 
ods of intensive farming. 

The Europeans may throw us into total eclipse when 
it comes to the employment of thrift and the exercise 
of self-denial, but when it comes to gaiting 150-acre 
and 500-acre farms they simply have to trail and take 
our dust. The whyfor of this takes us back to the 
Deeres and Olivers, the McCormicks and Deerings, 
just to mention a few names engraved high on the 
tablet in the hall of fame of the farm-implement in- 
dustry. They were the Watts and Stephensons and 
Edisons of American agriculture, and it might be well 
for the farm boy to learn something from his school- 
books concerning what they accomplished in the way 
of revolutionizing the agricultural industry of the 
world. Unhappily, our educational system prefers to 
teach how Cincinnatus left his plow to rust in a Roman 
field and returned to lead his legions to gory battle. 
Cincinnatus was a romantic figure because he helped 
rivers to run with the blood of barbarians, just as Von 
Hindenburg is a modern Colossus, having abandoned 
his country estates at the behest of the Kaiser to direct 
the slaughter of tens of thousands of Russians. 

Now that the patents have run out on chilled plows, 
binders, threshers, mowers and innumerable other 
implements that were in common use on the farm a 
generation ago, nobody seems to give a rap how they 
were evolved or what were the improvements made in 
the last several decades. You might as well try to 
weave romance round the buttonhook. The fact that 

Isl 



they are articles of commerce and that the inventors 
and their successors made millions out of them gives 
them a sordid, commonplace aspect that fails to thrill. 

But, coming up to date and studying the farm- 
implement industry as a huge and necessary modern 
enterprise, one need not search far to find a multi- 
plicity of interests. The industry has now become a 
great and exciting game for those who are in it. The 
leaders in the industry speak of it as the *' farm-imple- 
ment game,'* and they also inform you that the game 
has now reached a phase of evolution or even revolu- 
tion which will involve a lot of strenuous gambling for 
future profits. So far as scores of the little fellows in 
the industry are concerned it will require some tall 
gambling to keep out of bankruptcy. 

The grit in the gears of the farm-implement business 
is long credits. For two decades it has been recognized 
as the bane of the industry, but big manufacturers 
winked the other eye, confident their gears were 
strong enough to stand it. If the little fellows' gears 
were ground to bits, that was up to them — they were 
merely the hop-o'-my-thumbs of industrial competi- 
tion. But during the past few years the long credits 
grit has proved a serious menace to the big fellows' 
transmission, causing them to flock together in sober 
conclaves, pass resolutions and enter into gentlemen's 
agreements to readjust. 

The readjustment problem was recognized as a 
tough proposition — one of the toughest propositions 
that any industry ever tackled. It involved a great 
variety of causes and effects. It involved the auto- 
mobile industry and its growth and what its growth 

[6] 



has done to hurt the implement game. It involved 
the beginnings, sudden temporary collapse and recent 
sensational rebirth of farm-tractor manufacturing and 
distribution. 

The Great War and its influence were involved. 
Fundamentally and of primary importance was the 
farmer himself and his hereditary disinclination to 
pay cash for anything he could get on time. It may 
not be quite true that he inherited this disinclination, 
as to lay faults to heredity is simply a lazy habit of 
passing the buck to our ancestors. 

What was undeniably true, however, was that the 
present generation of farmers found the custom ready- 
made and of simple, effortless attainment. They 
bought on time, trusted to the gods who fostered crop 
production to help them pay out, and let it go at that. 
They bought from the dealers, the majority of whom 
had been farmers and were therefore accustomed to 
doing business on time and without the annoyance 
of keeping books or estimating the cost of overhead 
charges, or anything of the sort. 

It is reckoned that three out of every four imple- 
ment dealers are former farmers. It is also estimated 
that one of every four implement dealers goes out of 
business each year. 

In the Eastern districts, particularly in New Eng- 
land, the majority of dealers are just farmer or black- 
smith agents, with no stock on hand and not so much 
business system as a pushcart peddler. In the New 
England district the majority of the retail business is 
in the hands of men who have each less than $300 in- 
vested in stock. 

[7I 



Naturally there were multitudes of slow accounts 
and bad accounts, yet way back in the eighties the 
competition for this slow-pay and no-pay business 
was fierce. No other word will describe it. In 1880 
there were 2000 manufacturers of farm implements. 
Patents had run out and anybody who had a forge or 
a small foundry or something resembling a factory 
could manufacture plows and things and put them out. 
The prices seemed to hold up high enough to take 
care of the immense amount of waste. But as com- 
petition sped up, the waste for the little fellow in- 
creased. Doing business on a narrow margin of capital 
became more and more risky. With a small and none 
too efficiently operated plant the cost of manufacture 
became a bogy. Raw material scaled up in price. 
Labor was organizing and demanding higher wages. 
As costs rolled up, prices did not mount to support 
them in the difficult ascents. The big fellows were 
saving themselves by increasing the volume of output 
and cutting production costs. 



[8 



II 

The Slaughter of the Innocents — Then the 

Tractor 

A GRAPHIC chart has been made to illustrate 
the competition squeeze in the farm imple- 
^ ment industry, or what has been called the 
slaughter of the innocents. This chart shows that in 
1880 there were 2000 concerns doing business on a 
total capital of ^60,000,000. By 1890 between 1000 
and 1 100 of these manufacturers had been laid to rest 
in bankruptcy or else had thrown up their hands and 
pulled out with what little capital they could rescue. 
During the next ten years several hundred more 
dropped out. Ten years ago there remained some six 
hundred competitors. The shrinking process has con- 
tinued down to date, and the prospects are that it will 
continue until the industry is confined to several com- 
paratively small groups and several combinations of 
groups that were organized during the sweating-out 
stages of the past decade. 

This does not necessarily mean that the farm-imple- 
ment industry is becoming a close corporation or is 
tending toward any gigantic combination or trust. 
Energetic independents are liable to spring up from 
time to time and intrench themselves so solidly that 
no sort of combination can dislodge them. There is 

I9] 



V 



still room for inventive genius backed by a competent 
sufficiency of capital and modern business skill, and 
always will be. But the small tradition-following 
competitor with a narrow, insecure margin of working 
capital is caught between the long-term-credit mill- 
stones and seems to have no hope of prolonged exis- 
tence unless some of the big combinations should find 
it profitable to absorb him. 

At any rate this was the situation in 1916 so far as 
the farm-implement industry, properly so called, was 
concerned. When we come to discuss the new-bloom- 
ing tractor industry the case is altered somewhat. 
The cards are just being dealt in the tractor game, and 
some of the big hands are as likely to fall outside as to 
fall inside the farm-implement industry. The appear- 
ance of the small general-purpose tractor and the meas- 
uring of the immense possibilities for its development 
are bound to draw vigorous new blood and brains to 
the immediate environment of the farm-implement 
industry. 

During 1915-1916 the tractor industry had an 
amazing mushroom growth — in some aspects an un- 
healthy growth, in other aspects a benign growth. It 
had begun to follow the trail of the automobile in- 
dustry on a cash-sales basis, and was accomplishing 
the impossible in this direction, just as the automobile 
industry did. It bled real hard money from the farmer 
where real hard money did not seem to exist before, 
and quickened the farmer's interest in machinery and 
mechanics as the farm implement never did. 

Later I shall give some striking examples of this 
influence and attempt to analyze it. For the present I 

[10] 



shall simply offer a brief review of the widening farm 
tractor field and the possibilities it seemed to open up 
for the makers of farm implements equipped to manu- 
facture tractors. 

It should be inspiring to the imagination of future 
gas-tractor Napoleons to learn that our "inefficient 
underpowered" farms — to quote the present secretary 
of agriculture and several captains of industry — now 
employ approximately 24,000,000 mechanical horse 
power. This is allowing -^-^ mechanical horse power to 
the farm horse and the farm mule. On January i, 
1915, the Department of Agriculture took a census of 
farm animals and stated that the aggregate of horses 
and mules was 25,411,000, worth about ^3,000,000,- 
000. These horses and mules developed 14,230,000 
mechanical horse power. 

Add to this 750,000 windmills developing 75,000 
horse power, 100,000 steam tractors with 4,000,000 
horse power, 1,000,000 gas engines developing 5,000,- 
000 horse power and 20,000 gas tractors developing 
600,000 horse power, and we have our grand total of 
23,905,000 — a grand total, indeed, when you consider 
that the total power used in all our great and little 
manufacturing enterprises is only 18,755,286 horse 
power. The great difference is that the farm power is 
merely the available power that is applied only as it 
is needed. Manufacturing power is practically a con- 
tinuous load. During the war-munition-making period 
much of it was going day and night. There is no way 
of estimating the power units applied each year, but 
undoubtedly they are enormously greater than the 
power units a year applied on the farm. 

In] 



^i 



That is just where this infant gas tractor is going to 
fit into the picture. He can stand the emergency en- 
durance test where the horse and the mule fall down. 
He will pull all your tillage apparatus by moonlight 
as well as by daylight. If there is no moon all you have 
to do is to attach a searchlight. And when he isn't 
doing this field work he can do just what the now al- 
most passe steam tractor is doing in the way of devel- 
oping belt power. Just how far he will be able to 
supplant the stationary gas engine for other than 
pumping and specific household utilities is problemati- 
cal, but certainly the possibilities are big enough to 
encourage the gifted promoter and give latitude to the 
eloquence of the salesman. 

The estimate of 20,000 gas tractors was the Janu- 
ary I, 191 5, estimate. Kansas was the first state to 
take a tractor census, but the reports furnished were 
brought up only to March i, 191 5. The total then 
was 2500. During the summer that followed Kansas 
bought more than 500 of the smaller-sized tractors. 
Just one Kansas City jobbing firm sold 1000 small 
tractors in Kansas, Oklahoma, Eastern Colorado 
and Northern Texas in a little more than three 
months. 

One big manufacturing company was making as high 
as fifty "baby'' gas tractors a day during part of the 
summer and thirty a day as the demand began to 
slacken. Forty new tractor concerns came into being 
in 1914-1915. In a 1916 list of 170 concerns making 
or assembling and selling tractors two-thirds of them 
were as new as the modern use of asphyxiating gas as a 
weapon for offensive warfare. 

[12] 



The steam tractor did not come into extensive use 
until after the Civil War, and it was then employed 
chiefly to run threshing outfits, small sawmills and 
feed grinders. Steam tractors never made good at 
pulling tillage apparatus because of their great weight 
and the difficulty in getting water to them on the dry 
Western plains where they could be used for breaking 
vast areas of virgin sod. The failure of the steam 
tractor for this purpose paved the way for the gas 
tractor, and along about the beginning of this century 
the big gas tractor came in. 

Western Canada was opening up, the Dakotas, 
Montana, Western Kansas and the plateaus of the 
mountain states were calling to the plungers in grain 
to come in and make a killing. It looked like a golden 
market for the big gas tractor, and the manufacturers 
went to it. There was an exhilarating boom and then 
a bang, followed by a sudden collapse. The big gas 
tractor had been overexploited and oversold. 

Numberless excuses were offered and a large variety 
of causes were carefully dissected. On the ruins of the 
collapse the long-credit specter sat and grinned. Then 
there was the human factor that had been too lightly 
considered. The big gas tractor had been far from 
foolproof. It was not a simple mechanical device. Its 
intricacies demanded the control of experts and there 
were not enough experts to go round. The automo- 
bile had not yet begun to teach mechanics to hun- 
dreds of thousands of farmers. There was no perma- 
nent employment for high-priced mechanics on the 
farm. Just as is the case with harvest hands — when 
they were needed most they were scarcest. 

[13] 



There was a depressing lull in the gas-tractor in- 
dustry during a period of five years and more, and it 
was within the period of this lull that the automobile 
began going out to the farm in enormously increased 
consignments. During the ten-year period that saw 
the rise and fall of the big gas tractor, farm-implement 
products increased in value 44.6 per cent. In the same 
interim automobile products increased in value 5148.6 
per cent. How much of this increase was due to the 
farmer's purchasing power cannot be determined. 

The farmer was not a heavy buyer of automobiles 
during the experimental and testing-out years. City 
men carried the burden of pioneering costs for the 
automobile industry. The automobile had to be sim- 
plified and cheapened before the farmer could come 
into the market and buy for cash. The automobile 
manufacturer had been compelled in the beginning to 
distribute his product on a cash basis because of the 
high cost of the product, and the great depreciation in 
the value of the product immediately it had come into 
the hands of the purchaser. Practically every motor- 
car manufacturer who experimented with long credits 
went to the wall. 

The farm-implement people at first watched the 
automobile begin its rural inroads with small appre- 
hension. They were not prepared for the wave of 
buying that suddenly set in. It didn't seem possible 
or at all likely that the farmer could or would pay cash 
for automobiles when he wouldn't for his harvesting 
machinery or even his tillage tools. But he did. He 
had to or go without. He dug up the cash somehow. 
He overcame his natural reluctance to borrow rather 

[14] 



than owe. He went even farther than that — he laid 
by money with the distinct object of purchasing an 
automobile. He saved by purchasing fewer farm im- 
plements or by making those he had go further than 
was his custom. 

The implement manufacturers complain that he has 
carried this skimping to excess, with the result that 
his farm is not nearly so efficiently equipped as it was 
before he began buying automobiles. It is estimated 
that in the year 191 5 American farmers bought almost 
^200,000,000 worth of automobiles. Iowa farmers 
alone bought 68,000 cars. The earless Kansas farm is 
almost a freak. This means that farmers are paying 
practically as much cash for automobiles as they are 
owing for implements. 

Of course, it is an uneconomic situation and a galling 
one to the farm-implement group. It has made it more 
difficult to sell farm implements. Selling costs of both 
manufacturer and dealer have increased out of all 
proportion to actual sales. 

What the implement manufacturers all seem to have 
fought shy of is a direct appeal to the imagination of 
the farmer by modern publicity methods. The auto- 
mobile manufacturers on the other hand have done 
this with overwhelming success. Then there are the big 
mail-order competitors who are regarded by the ma- 
jority of farm-implement dealers as monstrous devour- 
ing ogres. The mail-order catalogues are teaching the 
farmers to buy for cash. The dealers able to meet this 
competition complacently are those who are able to 
pay up and take cash discounts and then sell for cash 
themselves. 

[IS] 



Service and improved selling methods seem to be 
the best defensive weapons with which to meet the 
big mail-order-house competition. Nor is the service 
end of it without its complications, as I shall endeavor 
to explain in a later chapter. So far the farmer has not 
gained a very distinct idea of just what the service 
advantages are. The automobile industry has done 
more in two or three years to bring this fact to his 
door than the farm-implement industry did in fifty. 
With the inclusion of the small farm tractor he should 
have a double awakening. 

It is very probable that many of the smaller manu- 
facturers will not be able to survive the pinch and 
strain due to the stocking up of the farm with auto- 
mobiles at the expense of purchasing farm implements. 
But the ultimate educating processes cannot fail to 
exercise a benign influence. 

The stationary internal combustion engine is a 
humdrum contraption by comparison with the auto- 
mobile. Undoubtedly it has served to supply a primer 
course, but that is about all. The automobile, you 
might say, has taken the whole farm family unto itself 
and compelled it to examine and understand its in- 
tricacies. It has given a new interest in the farm to the 
boy and the girl. It has awakened an interest in trac- 
tors in tens of thousands of farmers to whom the 
tractor would otherwise have remained an object of 
awe that they would prefer to let the other fellows 
tinker with; and, still more potent in its direct in- 
fluence, it has at least begun the education of the 
farmer in the advantages of paying cash in advance 
and assuming the full responsibilities of ownership. 

[i61 



You don't see many farm automobiles ditched in fence 
corners gathering rust and rot, and you won't see a 
great many tractors that have been paid for on the 
nail standing out in the field to collect dust and grit 
in their gears. 



[17] 



Ill 

Plows 

WHEN you see the womenfolks traipsing along 
Main Street wearing pill-box hats stuck up 
with goose quills or upside-down coal scuttles 
draped with little tomatoes and poison-ivy leaves you 
throw up your hands and wonder wherever these crazy 
notions will stop. 

Men may not wear such fool clothes, maybe, but 
how about plows ? Do you know that there are just as 
highfalutin notions in plows? Well, there are. 

The out-for-the-vote sex may have gone in for mul- 
tifarious fashions in clothes in the course of a few de- 
cades, but so has the farmer gone in for multifarious 
types in plows. And still does. 

Down in your valley, or up in your hill country, you 
may not see so many different sorts and shapes and 
makes — possibly not more than a dozen different 
kinds. There may be a couple of types of riding plows, 
half a dozen varieties of walking plows, and some little 
old eight-inch plows that a farm chunk can pull along 
comfortably. There may be a few gang plows about of 
different makes — probably one or two of the bigger 
farmers have engine gangs. New big and little tractor 
gangs began pouring into the market in 1914 and by 
the spring of 1916 there was a teeming diversity of 

[18I 



them. Also, very likely there is at least one man in 
the neighborhood who is trying out a deep-tilling de- 
vice. 

But your general impression is that plows is plows, 
just as pigs is pigs. 

That isn't so at all. There are more different kinds 
of plows than there are breeds of dogs. There are 
immensely more selected types of plows than there are 
selected breeds of dogs, pigs, dairy cattle, beef animals 
and horses. 

In one of the big plow establishments I visited in 
Moline, Illinois, I was informed that they made and 
carried in stock about looo varieties of plows. A 
neighboring plant carried about half a hundred types, 
but could further vary this line with attachments and 
adjustments. In these plants the steel plow was the 
leader, though they were equipped to satisfy most any 
plow shopper that came along, whether from the sand 
dunes of Long Island, New York, or from the tule 
islands of the San Joaquin Delta, California. 

But the catalogue listings of today are not the end 
in stock by a good deal. No one in the plant where 
they made and distributed looo varieties could tell 
the exact number in stock or in the process of fabrica- 
tion on that specific date. Possibly there were 998, 
just as likely 1 1 16. New patterns were coming in every 
few days. 

The farmer is every bit as fickle in the matter of 
plows as ever woman was in the matter of her ward- 
robe. 

No plow maker who is playing the game in a big 
way lets anything new in plows get away from him. 

[19] 



His agents are out searching the forty-eight states, the 
Canadian provinces, the South American repubHcs, 
all the countries involved in the great war, and the 
neutrals not involved. 

The plow makers abandoned the imitation of new 
styles in plows in the war zone. Instead they browsed 
round in Patagonia, British South Africa, Madagas- 
car, Java, Burma, the Philippines and the Sandwich 
Islands. At least one or two sent scouts to Iceland. 
You heard of quite a squadron of style-scouts nosing 
about in Siberia, the Caucasus and also in the Euph- 
rates Valley until the warring Turks and Russians 
drove them out. If you could follow these chaps about 
in their wanderings, you would acquire a most com- 
plete and liberal education in geography. 

These are just a few facts about plows that should 
contain a general interest appeal; also they ought to 
convince you that the modern farmer, wherever he 
farms, is considerably coddled and petted by the plow 
manufacturers. They not only give him an ample 
sufficiency in plow patterns but add to that about 900 
surplus variations — what you might call notional var- 
iations — for which there is no adequate justification. 

As for present-day plow patents, they are about as 
elusive and intangible as millinery patents. Funda- 
mental patents in the processing of steel and chilled 
iron have run out. The shaping of shares and landsides 
and moldboards has evolved kaleidoscopically. There 
are as many different designs as there are geometrical 
patterns and curlicues in a jigsaw puzzle, and if you 
get round enough you will hear from dealers and selling 
agents that there is a selling argument for each one. 

f 20I 



The history of the evolution of the plow is fairly- 
absorbing, if not thrilling. Few of us who as school- 
boys did or who as schoolboys do recite passages from 
the immortal oratory of Daniel Webster know that 
the great Dan'l invented a plow. He did, 'way back 
in 1836, the year before John Deere made his first steel 
plow. But the Webster plow never became a gracious 
commodity of commerce, notwithstanding that it was 
considerable of a plow. The trouble was that it was 
too much of a plow. Furthermore, Webster was only a 
statesman of the old school, with very little business 
keenness. 

The Webster plow was a little matter of thirteen 
feet long from the bridle to the tip of the handles; 
length of beam, nine feet; height of beam, two feet, 
one inch. The landside was four feet and two inches 
long. The bar and share were forged together. The 
moldboard was of wood, with a strip of iron. The 
breadth at heel of moldboard to landside was eighteen 
inches. The spread of the moldboard was twenty- 
seven inches, and the lower edge of the beam was 
two feet four inches above the sole. The width of the 
share was fifteen inches. The plow weighed 372 
pounds. 

The Webster plow might have amounted to some- 
thing had the gas tractor preceded it. As it required 
four yoke of oxen to pull it, Webster's neighbors looked 
on unenviously. There was no rush to duplicate it. 

Folks round about Marshfield, Massachusetts, where 
Dan'l farmed, were very fond of their famous neigh- 
bor, but they simply couldn't see his plow. No Marsh- 
field blacksmith sought to plagiarize it. 

[21I 



This historic plow is today housed in the machinery 
room at New Hampshire College, Durham, N. H. 
Moreover it is splendidly preserved. I am indebted to 
Dean Taylor, of the Agricultural Division of New 
Hampshire College, for the authentic history of the 
Webster plow down to date. Upon the death of Web- 
ster it was secured by the New Hampshire Historical 
Society and taken to Hanover. At the opening of 
Culver Hall in 1871 David M. Clough, the then **Corn 
King of New Hampshire," plowed with it, turning 
several furrows. In 1891 the plow was removed to 
Durham with the New Hampshire College. It was 
exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 
1876, and at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. 

The first American plow patent was granted to 
Charles Newbold of Burlington, New Jersey, in 1797. 
Our colonial forebears had worried along with a plow 
of which the moldboard and standard were of wood. 
The moldboard was sometimes plated with sheet iron. 
In Newbold's plow the moldboard, share, landside 
and point were a solid piece. 

This was an improved plow and a great American 
achievement, according to the recorded opinion of 
Thomas Jefferson. But it was not the first metal plow 
by a margin of tens of centuries. Turning to I Sam. 
xiii, 20, which was written into the Old Testament 
about 1 100 B.C., you read: ''But all the Israelites 
went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his 
share, and his coulter. ^^ The Romans plated their plows 
with iron, and so did the early Dutch. But for twenty- 
nine centuries no radical improvement worth mention- 
ing was made in the plow. 

[22] 



The Newbold plow had a serious defect in the fact 
that landside and point were cast in a solid piece. 
When the point wore out, the plow was worthless. 
Jethro Wood came along then, about 1819, and made 
a plow in sections, so that the worn parts could be 
renewed. William H. Seward, writing of Wood, said: 
*'No citizen of the United States has ever conferred 
greater benefits on this country than Jethro Wood.'* 
But the reward of merit did not come to Wood. He 
was one of that luckless legion of inventors who do 
not make good commercially with their inventions. 
He died in want, after furnishing a model for plows 
that made many other men rich. 

The next great advance was not so inadequately 
rewarded. John Deere gave the West the "plow that 
would scour" back in 1837, and John Deere made 
good both as an inventor and as a manufacturer. 
Some plow historians record that one John Lane 
antedated Deere by four years in making a steel plow, 
and there is no doubt that John Lane in 1869 did con- 
ceive of and patent soft-centered steel which was 
another epoch-making step in plow manufacture, as 
was the Oliver process of chilling cast iron which pre- 
ceded it by a year. 

Deere made his steel plow at Grand Detour, Illi- 
nois. The moldboard and share of his experimental 
plow were formed of strips of steel cut from an old 
saw. Three strips of steel of different lengths were 
used for the moldboard and one for the share. 

The texture of Illinois prairie sod was in a way the 
Mother Necessity of this invention. The iron plow 
might serve in the gritty, gravelly and stony lands of 

[23] 



the East, but out there in the Mississippi Basin it was 
a difficult tool for the pioneer. John Deere's invention 
is recorded as a good deal similar to the fabled revela- 
tion of the law of attraction and gravitation to Isaac 
Newton. Newton reclined under a tree and watched 
an apple descend. Deere watched a saw blade "scour" 
under friction. He was a plow maker, and inspiration 
came to him to bend a saw blade over a log and see 
how it would operate as a moldboard. It worked 
beautifully. The longer it worked the higher the polish 
and the smoother and easier the pull. 

Deere was really a frontiersman when he moved 
from Grand Detour and set up his little factory at 
Moline in 1847. So was William Parlin, when he 
entered the industry at Canton, Illinois. But the great 
mass of us never hear of these gentlemen, or if we do 
we are apt to catalogue them in our memories as we 
do purveyors of soap or patent candles or porous plas- 
ters. Nor are their names, brought down to date by 
the great manufacturing corporations they founded, 
so familiar to our ears or vision as some of the soap- 
and patent-medicine-making groups. I recall a time 
when Plymouth Rock three-dollar pants were better 
known than any standard make of plow in New Eng- 
land. The pants sold for cash and the plows didn't. 
The pants were advertised on hillside, fence, barn and 
factory wall by pioneer Yankee advertisers. The plows 
were not. 

The harrow evoluted even as the plow. There do 
not seem to be any early Egyptian or Chaldean records 
of this very important modern implement, but as they 
didn't do much more than scratch the surface of the 

[24I 



soil with their wooden plows in those days such a 
thing as harrowing was probably regarded as an aesthe- 
tic pastime. But we do learn from the old Roman 
records that the first empire builders made some crude 
advances in the development of the harrow. 

The prehistoric husbandman did all his harrowing, 
when he harrowed, with the branch of a tree attached 
to the tail of whatever beast of burden he employed as 
a draft animal. At the time when human slaves were 
cheaper than draft animals probably a little group of 
husky barbarians clanked along in their chains, pulling 
the heavy tree branch that was employed to smooth 
the furrows. 

Some centuries before the beginning of the Christian 
Era, however, progressive Roman farmers discarded 
the tree branch and contrived a wooden crotch armed 
with wooden teeth or iron spikes. From time to time 
they varied the shape of their harrows. Beginning 
with an implement of triangular construction, they 
gradually changed until they had evolved the oblong 
or square harrow, fitted with improved teeth or spikes 
of divers hard woods and metals. 

This sort of contrivance served the unimaginative 
and tradition-following peasant and serf through the 
Dark Ages and beyond. The renaissance of art and 
letters brought no improvement or perfection to the 
harrow. The let-well-enough-alone complacence of 
the man on the soil preserved the antique in all its 
crudities well into the last century, when the Yankee 
pioneer demanded something different. 

Not that the Yankee pioneer voiced his demand. So 
far as the advance of all farm implements is concerned, 

[25] 



the farmer has been practically a silent accepter and 
tryer-out. The man behind the forge, or later the 
skilled mechanic, was the inventor in ninety -nine 
cases out of a hundred. True, he may have farmed in 
his youth and in many cases he was the son of a farmer, 
but it was the gift of inspiration and imagination in 
mechanics that made him the trail blazer. He studied 
the deficiencies of the good-enough implement and 
then made improvements. He studied the new soil 
conditions that called for different and improved im- 
plements and created those implements. 

That was how the colter-harrow came along in 1857. 
Here was a harrow that pressed down and cut into the 
soil and scraped the surface to some extent. The disk 
harrow was a very real and permanent improvement. 
So, of course, was the spring-tooth harrow for rough 
and stony ground. The luxury of the riding harrow 
followed hand in hand, you might say, with the luxury 
of the riding plow. The development of the lever har- 
row overcame some of the more serious objections 
to the rigid-tooth harrow, giving a variable pitch to 
almost any kind of tooth. 

The important varieties of the tooth harrows are 
straight fixed tooth; adjustable tooth; curved tooth — 
pulverizers; spring- tooth — weeders. The chief varia- 
tions of the lever harrows are straight tooth, cultiva- 
tor tooth, spring tooth and combination spring and 
spike tooth. In disk harrows we have the main 
branches — full disk, cutaway, spading, orchard — and 
numerous variations. And among notably important 
later developments there is a pulverizing harrow, clod- 
crusher and leveler. 

[26 1 



The diversification of types in the harrow as in the 
plow is almost endless. You may look for something 
new in harrows as in plows almost any day of the week. 
Undoubtedly many new and important inventions in 
harrows will come in behind the small tractor. Like- 
wise will there be freaks and oddities sprung by some 
of the frenzied competitors in the trade. 

The cultivator line is not so long. The concern I 
mentioned that makes one thousand types of plows 
offers the farmer only sixty different kinds of cultiva- 
tors. 

The cultivator, naturally, evolved from the hoe to 
the horse-hoe, to the double-shovel plow, and to the 
straddle-row cultivator, which came in in the later 
fifties, consisting of two double-shovel plows, one on 
each side of the row. This implement, pulled by two 
horses, was really a tremendous gain over its prede- 
cessors and a revolutionizing force in tillage methods. 
The riding type of the straddle-row cultivator was 
merely a refinement. The disk cultivator came in the 
wake of the disk harrow. 



[27] 



IV 

Senseless Diversification 

THE Eastern farmer is more to blame for the 
seemingly senseless diversification in tillage tools 
than the Middle Western or Western farmer. 
Eastern farmers never made any attempt to standard- 
ize their planting methods. Often you will find half a 
dozen adjoining farmers planting half a dozen different 
widths of rows. As for the South, the width of row 
seems frequently left to the guiding whim of the mule. 
And in the implement industry the exploiters of tillage 
apparatus have sought more strenuously to satisfy than 
to control whims. 

The small beginnings of plow and tillage-tool manu- 
facturers do not interest us as they would had some of 
them been scalped by Indians or besieged in block- 
houses, or even if they had painted up the landscape 
with monster presentments of their wares. The plow 
industry does not seem to have devoted itself so much 
to attaining definite standards as to diversifying va- 
rieties. After visiting one great plow plant in Indiana 
I came away with the impression that if a farmer only 
possessed nerve enough to ask for it he could have a 
new type of plow made for him while he sat down and 
smoked his pipe. 

In this plant, where the chilled plow was the spe- 
cialty, but where they also made an extensive side line 

[28 1 



of steel plows, they made as a matter of routine manu- 
facture 350 varieties of shares, and every plow they 
made could be put up in seventy-five different ways. 
Of some of the varieties of shares carried they sold 
only one a year. They still carried in stock and made 
as demand called for it the identical product that the 
founder of the concern had contrived 'way back in the 
later sixties. 

To list all the varieties of plows that have come into 
existence during the past forty years would fill a 
small volume with agate type. An infinity of village 
blacksmiths had been devising plows to meet local 
soil conditions round about their villages or hamlets or 
to meet the wants of newcomers from distant parts 
who desired to perpetuate the kind of plow their fore- 
fathers used. Husbandmen from overseas brought 
peculiar plow ideas with them. 

Now and then neighbors grew to dislike one another 
to such a bitter intensity that they must have some- 
thing different to plow with than the contraption the 
hated Jones was using. Smith, having convinced him- 
self that Jones was a low-down, no-account cuss, 
easily persuaded himself that Jones' plow was just 
as low-down and no-account, for no other reason than 
that it was Jones' plow. 

When plow manufacture was firmly established and 
the manufacturers began to devise methods of sale 
and distribution they were confronted with the prob- 
lem of meeting local taste and competing with local 
blacksmith production by imitating the local black- 
smith's product. In the course of time many of these 
local blacksmiths expanded into plow makers and got 

[29] 



into the manufacturing game and established a local 
patronage that was mighty difficult to uproot. It was 
a long-credit business generally and competitors were 
compelled to buck it on a long-credit basis. 

The aggregate economic waste due to this sort of 
competition must have been enormous. In a thickly 
settled civilization the industry could never have stood 
the strain nor could the farmer have supported the 
burden. But our agricultural resources and oppor- 
tunities were sufficiently great to take care of billions 
of waste. The uneconomical methods of the farm- 
implement industry were only one phase of this waste. 
Scientific economies were not only unnecessary but 
impossible. 

New business for the plow maker grew up over- 
night in many different directions. Farmers were 
moving West every year by the tens of thousands. 
Generally they left their old implements behind them, 
or if they brought them with them they found them 
practically useless in the new regions they had gone 
to pioneer in. 

The shrewd manufacturers who cast out their ten- 
tacles for this ever expanding business and nailed it 
down were the ones who made great fortunes. They 
expanded their manufacturing plants and their sales 
organizations in unison. They could buy their raw 
materials in greater quantity and save on production, 
and the savings they made in this way could be spent 
in extending their sales organizations. 

For at least a generation the smaller competitors 
have seen that the only solution of their problem was 
"to expand or die." Those who had not the courage 

[30I 



or the means to expand were recorded in the mortality 
lists. 

After the chilled plow with removable point and the 
prairie breaker and black-land steel plows had estab- 
lished themselves, and had forced into the discard the 
cruder and old-fashioned types, there was very little 
worth recording in plow advance so far as the plow it- 
self was concerned until the sulky or wheeled plow was 
developed during the later sixties and early seventies. 

The riding plow was purely a Yankee product. The 
first successful one was invented by F. S. Davenport 
in 1864. The rolling colter and a three-horse evener 
were added by Robert Newton, of Jersey ville, Illinois. 
Then came the Gilpin Moore and the W. L. Cassaday 
patents in 1875 ^"^ 1876, and since then innumerable 
improvements and additions have been made to the 
sulky plow. The reversible hillside plow was probably 
the most notable. 

The jointer or skim plow, as an attachment, was a 
mighty important improvement, and so was the disk 
plow in localities where conditions were well adapted 
to its use. Then came the deep-tilling plow, the engine 
plow, and a great variety of engine tillage apparatus 
that just now is very much in the limelight and is 
occupying the attention of all the inventive genius in 
the industry. 

It is safe to say that the market for engine plows 
will in less than a decade be greater than the market 
for sulky plows. The engine plow is still in the infancy 
of its evolution. Originally devised for heavy, high- 
powered tractors, and slightly modified for the twenty- 
five to thirty horse-power tractor, it has yet to come 

[31] 



to its highest efficiency behind the small, general- 
purpose tractor that promises to become within the 
next few years almost a raging fashion among farmers. 

The plow makers watch the development of the 
smaller types of gas tractors warily and proceed with 
extreme caution. The general manager of the biggest 
plow-making establishment — as an exclusive producer 
of plows — said to me in this connection : 

"During the summer of 191 5 a succession of gas- 
tractor people urged us to make engine plows to meet 
the special needs of their tractors. Many of these 
tractor concerns had barely come into existence. 
Their product was untried. Their stability was more 
than questionable. They bought parts from specialty 
manufacturers and assembled them into ' something 
that resembled a tractor and which, under the most 
favorable conditions, would pull two or three bot- 
toms. 

"These concerns had had no opportunity to test out 
their tractors under varying soil conditions, nor did 
they seem likely to have such an opportunity with 
their limited capital. If we should build a special plow 
for their special tractor and that tractor should fail, it 
would be perfectly natural for the farmer to charge up 
some of the blame for the failure against the plow that 
we had made. 

"Forty of these new concerns have come into exist- 
ence during 1915, and the scramble will undoubtedly 
continue. At present we make engine plows to meet a 
variety of requirements and we shall continue to ex- 
pand our engine-plow business as the demand governs. 
But we shall follow a steady, dependable demand. 

[32] 



"We shall also endeavor to protect our dealers by 
selling our engine plows through them, just as we sell 
our walking plows and sulky plows. At least, that is 
the way the situation seems to shape itself just at 
present. We cannot predict what may happen within 
the next few years.'* 

The situation is bound to be complex if the tractor 
manufacturers succeed in selling their tractors for 
cash and the plow manufacturers continue to sell 
plows on long credits. 

There does not appear to be any good economic 
reason why the engine plow and the engine harrow 
should not become an integral part of the gas tractor, 
just as the self-starter has become an integral part of 
the automobile. 

So far as the farmer is concerned he should dis- 
tinctly benefit by buying his tractor and plows or other 
essential tillage apparatus as a fully tested one-piece 
mechanism rather than be compelled to take the word 
of various and sundry dealers concerning the plow 
that will specially fit his needs. 

Of course, some of the big implement concerns that 
are making tractors are also making plows peculiarly 
adapted to their tractors. The biggest of all the imple- 
ment concerns does not make plows, notwithstanding 
that it has gone into the small-tractor game with a 
rush and is producing in its own plants more small 
tractors than any of its rivals. This great corporation, 
however, is in a dominating position so far as the 
engine-plow situation is concerned. It can get what 
it wants in the way of engine plows and sell them as 
it sees fit. 

3 [33] 



Legless Heroes as Mechanicians 

THIRTY-TWO one-legged mechanicians were 
recruited from the trenches to study American 
farm machinery. They were just patriotic 
Frenchmen when they went to the front. They were | 
not mechanics. Some were bookkeepers, some drove 
taxicabs, some were clerks in department stores. A 
few were the sons of peasants. A few were policemen. 
All were heroes, and when they came out of the hos- 
pital they were worshiped as such. 

But sympathy and adulation will not keep the 
stomach full. Likewise the loss of a leg is a serious 
handicap in the struggle for bread. 

Why not make them mechanicians in this age of 
power and machinery? They had learned the intri- 
cacies of machine guns and light artillery. Why not 
teach them the intricacies of American reapers and 
binders, of tractors and threshers .f* 

This was the idea that flashed up in the mind of 
Doctor Bourrillon, in charge of a great home for con- 
valescents. He expressed it as follows: 

"Most of all, France needs and will need mechani- 
cians. Every little country village, no matter how 
small, should have its trained machinist. For, look 
you! The work which the French peasant has been 

[34] 



doing by hand, as his father has been doing before him, 
must hereafter be done by machine." 

So he assembled his legless heroes and started a 
class in mechanics. He set his pupils to work on Ameri- 
can harvesting and threshing implements, which they 
must learn to take apart and put together again, as 
they would have to do when they set up their little 
machine shops and tractor garages out in the country- 
side, or when they entered the employment of the big 
distributors of farm implements. 

This may seem like a random shot or an irrelevant 
bit of news from the front. On the contrary, it is 
mighty significant when we take up the discussion of 
the merchandising of farm machinery and the growth 
of great companies that absorbed and killed off little 
competitors. 

The foreign business of our big implement com- 
panies has been for some years an anchor to wind- 
ward. It has enabled them to a considerable degree 
to continue their system of long credits in this coun- 
try. Primarily it enabled them to increase vastly their 
output and thereby to cut down the cost of produc- 
tion. They invaded the world's markets with a su- 
perior product and sold it for cash on the docks at the 
same time they were selling the same stuff on long 
time at home. 

The American farmer has heard a lot about this from 
the mouths of certain eloquent politicians. It has 
been noisily declaimed that the implement manufac- 
turers were selling farm machinery to Siberian peas- 
ants for less than the American farmer was paying. 
So in Argentina, so in Bessarabia, so in Australia. 

[3Sl 



Possibly this was true to some extent while a market 
was being opened up and sales were made for cash. 
The manufacturer offers the excuse that the engineers 
of export pioneering compelled such price discrimina- 
tion. The manufacturer also adds this hypothesis: 
*'If a Hamburg, or Rotterdam, or Vladivostok jobber 
takes up his bill of lading and pays cash for his ship- 
ment, also paying freight and whatever duties may 
obtain, is there any reason why he should not make a 
better bargain than the dealer at home who demands a 
year within which to settle accounts and after that 
year is up will need further extension of time on im- 
plements unsold?" 

It is further urged that special cheap products are 
sold in certain foreign districts at a price below the 
level for similar, but much better quality, products in 
the United States. This might be called the German 
method of invading foreign fields. German manufac- 
turers learned how to beat the world at turning out 
cheaper products — poorer in quality but just good 
enough to stand up — and underselling all competitors. 
Not in the farm-implement line however. Even the 
Germans couldn't do that without a big home market 
to back them up. As I have observed before, when 
it comes to speeding up farms with machinery the 
Teutons are not one-two-three with us. 

If our implement industry had been confined to 
plows and small tillage tools, there probably never 
would have come into being this present-day specter 
of long credits and baffling intricacies of distribution. 
Small tools could have been sold outright to the dealer, 
who in turn could have marketed them to the farmer 

[36] 



and got his cash for them, except in extraordinary 
cases of crop failure. But when expensive machinery, 
such as threshers, reapers, binders, mowers, and so on, 
came along it became necessary to do a lot of financing. 

At the top came the manufacturer; one step down 
was the jobber; then the dealer or farmer agent; and 
finally the farmer. To work back, the farmer couldn't 
pay cash for this expensive machinery, as he didn't 
have it to pay. At the beginning of things he was 
pioneering. He was in pretty deep himself in a game 
and a gamble. He was breaking prairie or grubbing 
sage or making over swamps; likewise was he fighting 
grasshoppers, Hessian flies, rootworms, blights and 
mildews. 

The reaper was developed in 183 1 and came into 
use in the early forties. The crude beginnings of the 
mower had preceded it. Along in 1864 came the Marsh 
harvester — a reaper with a platform upon which two 
men could stand and bind the grain as it was cut. 
Then in 1875 came the wire-binder, which automatic- 
ally made and tied the bundles. The automatic twine- 
binder replaced this five years later. 

All the great advances in farm machinery save the 
tractor came within this period, and during that same 
great epoch our armies of pioneering husbandmen 
marched ever westward, creating new business for 
the implement men, as the implement men in their 
turn had created boundless opportunities for the 
pioneer. 

You can get an insight into the history of these 
glorious times from the pithy exclamation of an Illi- 
nois farmer: 

[37] 



*'When I first went into the harvest field it took 
ten men to cut and bind my grain/* he said. **Now 
our hired girl gets on the seat of a self-binder and does 
the whole business." 

But the men who began buying this harvesting 
machinery, or, as one man has said, "these painted 
chariots that worked the miracle of plenty," were 
almost hopelessly shy of cash. So were the banks — 
what banks there were. And the manufacturer in his 
turn, for a while at least, was hard up for cash. All 
the money that could be scraped from all the banks 
wouldn't much more than buy the egg crop of Iowa, 
Kansas and Illinois today. 

Hence the farmer bought on time. And he paid 
high. If he hadn't paid high there wouldn't be any 
survivors in the industry today. Also he bought 
extravagantly. 

Some manufacturers will attempt to deny this and 
offer you a scuttleful of statistics to prove that Amer- 
ican farms are still 'way underpowered in the matter 
of machinery equipment. 

So they are, tens of thousands of them, if you siee 
it up in a merely statistical light and don't care how 
you swallow your statistics. It is always better to salt 
down and sweat out statistics if you want to get any- 
where near the truth. 

The farmer not only bought farm machinery extra- 
vagantly but he used it extravagantly. He still does, 
but to nothing like the same extent. Sales were pushed 
at the farmer through three powerful agencies — manu- 
facturer to jobber, to dealer, to farmer. And there 
were heavy risks all along the line. 

[38] 



If all the dealer's customers came out of their har- 
vests dripping with profits the dealer collected in full. 
Presto! the jobber collected in full. But the jobber 
was selling to more than one dealer. He didn't make 
good on all his risks unless all his dealer customers 
made good on all theirs. And still higher up, and 
carrying a still greater burden of risks, was the manu- 
facturer. He didn't make good on all his risks unless 
all the jobbers made good on all theirs. 

As the industry grew up the manufacturer was con- 
stantly blazing new trails for his distributing organi- 
zation. He was giving the jobber lessons in selling to 
the dealer, and the jobber was giving the dealer lessons 
in selling to the farmer. 

But who was giving the farmer lessons in buying? 
Nobody. Just now our schools of agriculture have 
begun to teach the value of farm machinery and to 
explain what implements are necessary and what are 
unnecessary or uneconomical. 

Some of the colleges have splendidly equipped engi- 
neering departments and have begun admirable team- 
work with the farmer and the manufacturer. And our 
Federal Department of Agriculture has become almost 
awake to the fact that machinery is used on the farm — 
machinery other than plows. 

Not that you could say that the Federal Depart- 
ment of Agriculture is up and alert on farm machinery 
in the year of grace 1916. Just go down there to 
Washington and try to get some official information on 
the farm-implement industry as I did. Don't go, 
though, if you desire any down-to-date data. You 
won't get them. You may find a bulletin on tractors 

[39] 



that came out about five years too late to be of any 
use. You may find another Httle bulletin, Farm Im- 
plements and Machinery, vintage of 1901, containing 
tables of statistics showing that six-foot twine-binders 
sold at ^325 in 1880 and at $120 in 1900. You will also 
learn from it that the same spring-tooth harrow — 
sixteen-tooth — that cost twenty-five dollars in i860 
was selling for seven dollars in 1900. 



[40] 



VI 

Squeezing Out the Jobber 

WHAT you do not learn from official govern- 
ment bulletins is that a generation or so of 
manufacturing not only has cut down the 
price of tools, but has enormously increased their effi- 
ciency; nor do you learn anything about the processes 
of change that have occurred in the industry. There 
is not a hint of the gradual elimination of the jobber 
from the distribution system, of the union of affiliated 
companies and the combination of competitors into 
great dominating corporations. There are just a few 
naked statistical facts with no explanations attached. 
The jobber was not forced out of the distribution 
system because he oversold or undersold the farmer 
through the dealer. He was forced out primarily 
because he was a weak link in the chain. The closer 
the relations between the manufacturer and the con- 
sumer of farm implements the better for both. 

A farm implement is not bought, put on and worn 
like a pair of shoes. Even a plow is a mechanism of a 
dozen or more distinct parts. Some harvesting ma- 
chines have as many as 2500 parts. Parts wear out, 
some much faster than others. Or they get kinks in 
them. Or they are busted by bunglers. Or the user 
gets mad at them and wallops them with an ax. 

[41] 



With the jobber between the manufacturer and the 
dealer, the manufacturer was seriously handicapped 
in passing along aid, advice and service to the farmer. 
The dealer was vitally necessary to perform neigh- 
borhood service, but the jobber couldn't help to any 
extent, unless he were big enough to carry a pretty 
full stock of repair parts and shoot them along to the 
dealer when he needed them. 

The manufacturer wanted closer personal relations 
with the consumer than he could obtain through the 
jobber. The jobber built up a personal business of his 
own, sent his salesmen out and got what business he 
could, not for one manufacturer but for a dozen or a 
score. When the jobber died his business died with 
him. Not always, but pretty much as a rule. Some 
other jobber, working for other manufacturers, came 
in and grabbed this business, and the manufacturer 
whose jobber had dropped out had to begin all over 
again to work back into the territory. 

The method employed to eliminate the jobber was 
to establish branch houses or to absorb the jobber and 
create of his business what was virtually a branch 
house. A great plow concern in the early days of its 
expansion persuaded men to establish jobbing houses 
in new territory and lent them capital to set them 
going. This plow concern carried a fairly complete 
line of tillage tools, but in order to stock up the jobber 
with a necessarily complete line it was compelled to fill 
out with the lines of other factories. To do this the 
manufacturer himself had to become a jobber. 

As sales increased in the side lines the men who 
were making them soon found that their capacity of 

[42] 



production had reached the limit. They didn't quite 
dare to expand, for the plow maker who was jobbing 
their products with his tillage lines might suddenly 
decide to drop their lines and take up the wares of 
rival producers. 

On the plow maker's side he found that his plow 
business was getting ahead of the special side lines he 
had taken on. He also figured that he was making 
money for the manufacturers of the side lines that he 
might as well make for himself if he could handle 
both production and merchandising. Naturally this 
brought up the question of the advisabihty of buying 
out the plants of the affiliated lines. 

As an example, say the company was making tillage 
tools and had begun to job wagons or buggies. 
Through the branch house it was found easier to sell 
the dealer tillage tools with wagons than tillage tools 
without wagons. The dealer was going to buy wagons 
anyhow, and could save in freight by buying in car- 
load lots. 

But the wagon maker couldn't keep up the produc- 
tion pace of the bigger manufacturer of tillage imple- 
ments. Say the proposition was put to the wagon 
maker to sell out. He was offered a price that was to a 
certain degree tempting. He might figure that if he 
remained an independent and expanded he might in 
the end get more out of it. But if the tillage maker 
dumped his line and then set up a new wagon plant of 
his own, where would the wagon maker get off? On 
the bird-in-the-hand theory, he would better sell. 

And that is what happened in a good many cases. 
The producers of affiliated lines sold out their plants 

[43] 



and their businesses to the dominating concern that 
was jobbing affihated Hnes. The plants were kept 
separate and it was undoubtedly possible to obtain 
higher efficiency in production and to accomplish 
notable economies in distribution and sales. Also by 
takmg on noncompeting lines it was possible to skirt 
round the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. 

To show what manufacturing giants might be 
wrought by this method of absorption and expansion 
I shall list the various Deere factories and what they 
make today under the control and direction of a 
$65,000,000 corporation: 

Deere & Company, Moline, Illinois: Steel plows, 
1000 varieties; cultivators, 60 varieties; and harrows. 

Deere & Mansur Company, Moline, Illinois: Corn 
planters, disk harrows and beet tools. 

John Deere Wagon Company, Moline, Illinois: 
Farm and mountain wagons and teaming gears. 

Marseilles Company, East Moline, Illinois: Shellers, 
portable elevators, wagon dumps and manure spread- 



ers. 



Davenport Wagon Company, Davenport, Iowa: 
Roller-bearing steel wagons and gears. 

Dain Manufacturing Company, Ottumwa, Iowa: 
Hay loaders, stackers, sweep rakes and presses. 

Dain Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Welland, On- 
tario: Hay tools and spreaders for the Canadian trade. 

Syracuse Chilled Plow Company, Syracuse, New 
York: Full line chilled plows and spring-tooth har- 
rows. 

Fort Smith Wagon Company, Fort Smith, Arkan- 
sas: Wagons for South and Southwest. 

I44I 



Van Brunt Manufacturing Company, Horicon, 
Wisconsin: Grain drills and seeders. 

Deere & Company, harvester department, East 
Moline, Illinois: Mowers, rakes and binders. 

And all this was built upon a band-saw plow made 
for the pioneer trade. To show how the jobber has 
been absorbed as the industry expanded it is only 
necessary to mention that the John Deere Plow Com- 
pany has branch houses in Minneapolis, Moline, Des 
Moines, Milwaukee; Bloomington, Illinois; Omaha; 
Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Kansas City; Oklahoma 
City; Denver; St. Louis; New Orleans; Nashville; 
Atlanta; Dallas; Portland; Spokane; Seattle; Boise, 
Idaho; San Francisco; Indianapolis; Columbus, 
Ohio; Lansing, Michigan; Baltimore; Syracuse, New 
York; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Saskatoon, Saskatche- 
wan; Calgary, Lethbridge and Edmonton, Alberta; 
Toronto, Ontario; and Salt Lake City. 

Other big expanders who followed the Deere method 
of taking on affiliated lines are the Moline Plow Com- 
pany, Emerson-Brantingham Company, Janesville 
Machine Company, Rock Island Plow Company, 
Parlin & Orendorff Company, Rumely Products 
Company, J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, 
J. I. Case Plow Company, and Massey-Harris Com- 
pany of Canada. 

In its defense to the Government's anti-trust suit 
the International Harvester Company sought to show 
how these expanders were really active and energetic 
competitors. 

And this was notwithstanding that the methods of 
expansion had a very different origin. 

[45] 



There were the Deere Company selling io8 imple- 
ments to the International's 59, the Moline Plow 
Company with 57, the Emerson-Brantingham Com- 
pany with 47, the Rock Island Plow Company with 
34, Parlin & OrendorfF with 28, the Rumely Company 
with 26, the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company 
with 20 and the J. I. Case Plow Company with 19. 

Deere, it was urged, competed with 49 of the Inter- 
national's 59 lines, having entered the harvesting 
trade as a real competitor; the Emerson-Brantingham 
Company competed with 33; the Moline Plow Com- 
pany with 3 1 ; the Rock Island Plow Company with 
21; Parlin & OrendorfF with 17; the Rumely Company 
with 13; J. I. Case Plow Company with 11, and J. I. 
Case Threshing Machine Company with 8. The 
Emerson-Brantingham Company was a vigorous com- 
petitor, so the International's brief maintained, in 
mowers and rakes. 

The Emerson-Brantingham Company is a ^50,- 
000,000 corporation; the J. I. Case Threshing Ma- 
chine Company has an authorized capitalization of 
$40,000,000; the Moline Plow Company is an $18,- 
000,000 company; the Massey-Harris Company has 
an issued capital stock of $15,000,000 and resources of 
$30,000,000. 

The Moline Plow Company did not begin the manu- 
facture and sale of its harvesting line until 1913; the 
Case Company began the construction of a plant for 
the manufacture of binders about the same time. The 
Government suit against the International was then 
under way. The Deere Company went into the mower 
business in 1909 by buying the Dain plant. It made 

[46] 



its debut in the binder business in 191 1, selling 27 
binders in that year and 933 the following year. The 
Acme Harvesting Machine Company entered the field 
in competition with the so-called Harvester Trust in 
1907-1908, and in 1912 sold 31,000 harvesting ma- 
chines. 

This reads a good deal like a record of the survival 
of the fittest, and to a large extent may be regarded as 
such. Of course, it is far from a complete Who's Who 
of the implement trade, though it contains the names 
of the leading big diversifiers who followed the trend 
of expansion and worked out elaborate manufactur- 
ing and merchandising facilities, but remained practi- 
cally at a standstill on the long-credit sales method. 

To return to the branch-house method of distribu- 
tion employed by these big fellows, it has been the 
custom to assign to each branch house an exclusive 
territory. Each branch-house manager puts his men 
on the road to sell to the dealer. Nowadays there are 
many other branch houses of many other big concerns 
in the same territory and some surviving jobbers. 

The branch houses pretty generally are not so much 
concerned with extending business for profits that 
they can show on their books as with increasing the 
volume of business. This is the big advantage they 
have had over the jobber, as distinctly a wholesaler 
doing business for a wholesaler's profits. Probably the 
majority of the branch houses are jobbing lines manu- 
factured by independents, but they are jobbing these 
lines more as a convenience than for the purpose of 
earning a jobber's profit. Naturally this situation 
has given the branch houses a big advantage over 

[47] 



competing jobbers who were not big enough and strong 1 
enough with the personal trade they had built up to 
stay in the game. 

The wholesalers who have stood the gafF are the 
ones who amplified their lines with specialties that the 
farm-implement branch houses could not carry and 
who have been financially strong enough to carry their 
dealer customers through hard times and thereby 
strengthen the personal relationship. Some of the big 
jobbers who have been able to remain in the game 
have stood to some extent as a barrier between the 
little independents and the ever-fattening holding 
companies and combinations that were squeezing the 
independents against the wall of competition. 

For the manufacturer the branch house is a much 
more flexible arm of distribution than the jobber ever 
was or could be. The manufacturer autocratically dic- 
tates prices and methods of sales and distribution to 
his branch houses. There is no annual wrangle over 
prices and sales. 

As the big jobbers were bowled out of it in the great 
distributing centers for farm implements they were 
naturally very bitter in their criticisms. Many of 
them related how they had toiled patiently and dili- 
gently to build up big trade for implement manufac- 
turers, only to have the lines taken from them and 
branch houses established. 



[48I 



VII 

Elaborate Systems of Merchandising 

THE International Harvester Company, since its 
organization in 1902, built up even more elab- 
orate systems of merchandising than the branch- 
house method employed by the manufacturers of tillage 
tools and threshing outfits. Jobbers who have not sur- 
vived, and some who are barely surviving, declare with 
bitter vehemence that the I. H. C. method is both more 
elaborate and more ruthless. 

The tillage-implement route of distribution is: Fac- 
tory to factory branch house, to retailer, to consumer. 
The International route is: Factory to general agent, 
to retailer, to consumer. The general agent has his 
branch distributing warehouse just as the manager of 
the branch house has, but he does more than merely 
send out salesmen to push his wares to the retailer. 
The general agent divides up his territory among a 
staff of submanagers called blockmen. The general 
agent's territory may embrace several states. The 
blockman's territory will include from one to six 
counties. 

The blockman is paid a salary and sometimes a 
commission to supplement the salary. And he is more 
than salesman, for he not only sells to the retailer, but 
employs canvassers to assist the retailer in selling. 

[49] 



Say the blockman has persuaded a retailer to stock 
up with a full harvesting line. Having done this he 
does not leave it to the retailer to let his sales flow 
along in the natural course of events. It is his func- 
tion to speed up each retailer by a system of assists. 
The canvasser provides the assists. 

The canvasser is employed by the month for a few 
months at a time. He is hired on a salary and is 
coached by the blockman how to sell to the farmer. 
The blockman will take his canvasser to the retailer 
and say something to this effect: 

"Here is a young man to help you sell our line. Just 
drive him round to any prospects you have and he 
will make the selling talk for you. You get your com- 
mission just the same." 

While there is no doubt of the efficiency of this sys- 
tem, it is open to criticism. It has been criticised. It 
has been bitterly assailed — chiefly on the ground that 
these canvasser assists are far from conservative in 
their selling talks. Taken on for a few months at a 
time they have no follow-up responsibilities. They are 
not coming back to the same territory again. When it 
comes to a selling talk they feel pretty free to go the 
limit. It is only human nature that they should ex- 
tend themselves. 

And if all does not turn out as golden and rosy as 
they pictured it the farmer victim can "holler" in 
vain and there is no one round to catch the "holler." 
The retailer can sit back and say: "Well, I didn't sell 
you. I simply delivered the goods." The dealer may 
pass the buck — not that he always does. If the kick 
should be passed along to the blockman he could pass 

[50] 



the buck, too, as the real villain in the case — the elu- 
sive canvasser — has gone his way and is possibly work- 
ing for some other blockman in some other field. 

It also happens occasionally that the dealer who is 
taking the canvasser round is handling only one line 
for the canvasser's company. The dealer may handle 
somebody else's wagons, another manufacturer's cream 
separators, and so on. The canvasser will not help 
him to sell these competing lines. 

On the contrary, if he gets half a chance he will talk 
up the International competing lines. He may not be 
following any written rules or explicit instructions in 
doing this. It is just natural impulse and incentive to 
make a showing. 

Furthermore, these canvassers are sent out to report 
on the farmer as well as to sell to him as an assist for 
the dealer. They must gather data on his financial 
standing, the size of his farm and the dimensions of 
his mortgage, the size of his family, the condition of 
his house and buildings; also and particularly, he 
must make inventory of all farm implements and 
mechanical equipment on the place and their condi- 
tion. 

The International canvasser is a census taker for 
the International as well as a salesman. By the em- 
ployment of thousands of canvassers, both here and 
abroad, this great corporation has obtained more 
specific information on agricultural conditions than 
probably any other agency in the world. It can main- 
tain an accurate statistical focus on the extent of the 
farm-implement market. It is able to card-index 
hundreds of thousands of farmers as prospects not 

[SI] 



only for this year but for next year and the year after. I 
And it is keeping just as close tabs on the farmers in 
Central Siberia as it is on the farmers in North Da- 
kota. 

In 1912 the branch of the I. H. C. at Omsk, in 
Western Siberia, did the largest business of any of its 
branches in the world. The Omsk sales for that year 
totaled ^3,184,325.63. 

It has been the contention of the International 
Company that it was organized not for the purpose of 
creating a monopoly of old lines of farm implements, 
but for the development of foreign trade and the es- 
tablishment of the domestic business on a better 
economic basis. 

There can be no question of the enormous expansion 
of its business in foreign fields. The increase from 1902 
to 1912 was from $10,400,000 to $50,896,000. It ex- 
ported 131,977 binders and reapers in 1913 — more 
than the number of binders and reapers sold by the 
International Company in the United States for the 
same period or in any year since its formation. It is 
estimated that the International makes more than 
eighty per cent of the world's harvesting machinery. 

The company has built half a score of great manu- 
facturing plants in the foreign field to take care of 
service requirements and the manufacture of parts, as 
well as to manufacture implements complete in all 
their units. 

It is not at all unlikely that the foreign business of 
this giant in the industry and of several of the surviv- 
ing big rivals in the tillage line will overshadow the 
domestic business in the course of the next decade, 

[52] 



all of which should give a better toe hold for domestic 
expansion. 

The invasion of the foreign field was begun more 
than a generation ago. Companies absorbed in the 
International, and independents that were not ab- 
sorbed, had pioneered for expansion abroad with 
great success. Five years ago — in 1910 — when the 
I. H. C. was being depicted as a devouring octo- 
pus, one of its smaller rivals, the Walter A. Wood 
Company, manufacturing harvesting machinery, was 
shipping more than sixty per cent of its product over- 
seas. 

Nor was this export expansion confined to harvest- 
ing outfits. American plows, harrows and cultivators, 
also threshers and tractors, began to be sought by 
foreign jobbers and to find a cash market in many 
foreign countries. At the end of the Civil War our 
implement exports totaled about $1,000,000. Growth 
during the next thirty years was very gradual. The 
1895 total was $4,000,000. By 1900 it had jumped up 
to $16,000,000. This was just before the consolidation 
period. 

Following the organization of the International, 
and the evolution of other big companies by somewhat 
difi^erent forms of combination and absorption, the 
foreign business almost doubled within five years. 
In 1910 the reported total was $30,000,000. For the 
fiscal year ending June 30, 1913, according to the re- 
port of the Department of Commerce, the total ex- 
ports of agricultural implements was $40,572,352 — 
more than twenty-five per cent of the total production 
of the industry. 

[53] 



It was estimated when the last census was taken 
that our harvester companies were doing from 
twenty to sixty per cent of their business in the 
foreign field; that the plow companies were exporting 
from ten to thirty-three and a third per cent of their 
products, and that the threshing-machine companies 
were shipping abroad from five to forty per cent 
of their output. 

Since then the export business of the big companies 
has continued to increase — that is, up to the outbreak 
of the Great War. The six months following the be- 
ginning of war were gloomy ones in the industry for 
the majority of the exporters. The I. H. C. with its 
foreign factories and great international organization 
suffered the least. 

At the end of the first year of the war prospects 
were brighter all round. The tillage companies were 
increasing their business in South America and coun- 
tries outside the war zone. Companies manufacturing 
motor trucks and tractors capable of pulling artillery 
and commissary wagons got big war orders. 

As for future expansion in the export field, there 
seems no limit to it if it turns out that central and 
western Europe will be compelled after the war to 
revise their agricultural methods. At least, there 
should be a far greater market for the smaller imple- 
ments adapted to the smaller types of European farms. 
Likewise there should be a great opportunity for the 
utilization of the smaller types of farm tractor. 

Indeed, there is more than a little significance in 
the recruiting of one-legged mechanics to study 
American farm machinery. 

[54] 



VIII 

The Long Credit Spectre 

HOW will the farmer buy aeroplanes? 
He won't, you say. 
How do you know? Ten years ago he looked 
upon automobiles as pesky contraptions. He called 
'em red devils. They ran over his chickens. They 
bumped his cows. They threw dust in his eyes. They 
scared his horses. They were benzene varmints. Their 
drivers were idle-rich city fellows for whom hanging 
would have been tender mercy. 

But those early-day road-burners were too costly. 
And they came only to him who could pay cash. You 
could buy plows, harrows, binders — yea, tractors and 
threshers — with the winged dollar, the transitory, 
elusive dollar that was spawned in the cornfield in the 
early spring and seemed likely to hatch out with the 
early frosts of harvest time. You promised to pay 
over this winged dollar provided it hatched out, and 
if, after it hatched out, you were able to catch it on the 
wing. 

It was always needful to pull down quite a flock of 
these winged dollars, and after you got 'em down and 
clipped their wings you must hustle along and pay the 
grocer, the meat man and sundry and divers other 
purveyors of necessaries who might stop their credit 

[55] 



and put you in a nasty hole. The hired hands had to 
be paid, too, and the interest on the mortgage — if you 
had one; not to mention odds and ends of other 
things. Then and thereafter, if there was anything 
left of the blow-away flock, you paid the implement 
dealer. 

The implement man came last. Why? Oh, simply 
because. It wasn't a case of must. If the implement 
man didn't like it he could lump it. Suppose he came 
up and took your tools away. Well, what if he did ? 
You didn't need 'em till spring. You couldn't eat 
'em; couldn't wear 'em; couldn't even burn 'em in the 
stove. If he came and took 'em, why, he could have 
'em, but if he took 'em he'd never get a dollar you 
owed on 'em. And when spring came along, why, you 
could go down to some other dealer and lay in a new 
stock. There was no end of dealers, and they were all 
climbin' over one another trying to sell. 

But it won't be that way when the farmer buys 
aeroplanes. 

It wasn't that way at all when he began buying 
automobiles. 

Nor is the tendency shaping that way as the farmer 
gets into the new hurly-burly of a small-farm-tractor 
market. 

First, let us take the automobile-purchasing pro- 
clivity of the farmer apart. It is intensely interesting 
when you analyze it. Take it from the beginning steps. 
The motor came over the horizon spitting fire and 
messing things up. It incited dislike. Presently it in- 
cited sufficient dislike to become interesting. It en- 
gaged curiosity. 

[56 1 



Curiosity was fanned by press agents and boomers. 
For a while only the very rich owned autos. After a 
while the not-so-rich began to acquire them. The 
farmer heard they were getting cheaper. He saw they 
were getting better — he didn't have to tow so many of 
them. His opportunities to laugh at the fellow toiling 
under them thinned away. 

And in the course of time folks he knew in town 
began to own them. The doctors were running round 
in them. Pretty soon he saw fellows driving them that 
didn't have any special right or privilege to own 
them — fellows who didn't own land or much substance 
of any kind. 

By this time the farmer's dislike of the automobile 
had worn itself threadbare. They certainly did fetch 
a person round the country some. And it was great 
sport to ride in 'em. Must be greater sport to run one. 
The germs of desire to own were sown in a fertile 
seed-bed by the time the automobile salesman came 
out to run the farmer round a bit and talk things over. 

He talked a good deal and talked winsomely, but, 
strange to say, he didn't talk long credits. He told the 
prospect he couldn't talk long credits, no matter how 
much he loved him and how closely his folks were re- 
lated by blood or marriage. Why.'' For the simple 
reason that the only way he could get a car at the 
freight depot was by the payment of cash on delivery. 
The factory couldn't sell on time, as the risks were too 
great. Not that the farmer was not a man of sub- 
stance; that went without saying. But suppose the 
day after he bought his car on credit he ran it into a 
ditch or ofFa bridge or down a gully. Smash, a thousand 

[57] 



dollars had gone to scrap! — and instead of blam- 
ing the wreck on himself he'd blame it on the car. 
Furthermore, it was important for the farmer to con- 
sider that a car was a secondhand car after it had run 
five miles, and a secondhand car was worth only 
about fifty per cent of its retail price. 

Absolutely nothing doing except for cash! 

But the retailer of automobiles didn't ride off at this 
point and leave his prospect plunged in gloom. In- 
stead, he sat down and delivered a little lecture on the 
art and science of borrowing. Innumerable other 
missionaries had attempted to inspire the man on the 
land with the same theory that it is better to borrow 
than merely to owe. 

Some carper is apt to leap up here and snort: 
** There is no difference between borrowing and owing. 
When you borrow you owe; when you owe you must 
have borrowed." 

Just a minute, please. There is really a huge dif- 
ference between borrowing and just owing. When a 
fellow buys a plow or a mower on open account from 
the dealer he does not borrow; he simply owes. But 
when he goes to a money lender or a bank and obtains 
the money to purchase that plow or mower he bor- 
rows. Furthermore, he pledges himself to return the 
money he borrows. He gives his note, or assumes the 
burden of a mortgage, or puts his signature to some 
sort of promissory pledge to pay. And he must pay 
interest in some fixed amount on what he borrows. 
And if he is a man of substance the paper he signs has 
a current value throughout the district. The banks 
will buy that paper at slightly less than its face value, 

[58] 



charging a discount rate to recompense for the risk 
taken and apportion it toward the cost of running the 
bank. And here and there you will find note-brokers 
who discount this paper when the bank will not handle 
it. 

Now, the dealer himself may take the farmer's note 
or signed promise to pay, and when he is selling costly 
farm implements he is compelled to do so by the 
branch house or factory that supplies him with imple- 
ments. Having taken this note, though, he must pass 
it along to the manufacturer to back up his own credit. 
This puts the purchase on a borrowing, not merely an 
owing, basis, but it also brings the manufacturer into 
the banking business and makes heavy demands on 
his capital. The manufacturer becomes virtually a 
trust company, tying up large sums that might have 
been applied to expanding the essential needs of the 
industry. It is a superimposed burden, no matter how 
you look at it, and only the very strong can stand the 
strain. When the very strong stand the strain and the 
weak go down, this process of elimination adds some 
definite strength to the very strong by withdrawing 
just so much competition. 

In the implement industry the very strong were 
building up bone and sinew for half a century. By 
comparison the automobile industry was a tropical 
growth. New blooms were coming to flower every 
night on mighty slender stems. There was barely 
enough capital available for the purposes of manu- 
facture, distribution and advertising. There was no 
surplus on hand to enable the manufacturer to engage 
in banking on the side. He simply couldn't hold the 

[59] 



bag for the distributor and retailer. If he couldn't get 
cash on delivery he would have to shut down. He 
couldn't pay the interest on borrowed capital, buy 
raw material and pay wages. And, as I have empha- 
sized before, his product was far more costly and 
perishable than farm implements. 

The dealer-salesman or salesman for the automobile 
dealer may not have explained all this to his farmer 
prospect, but he did make himself emphatically clear 
on the point that if the farmer were to buy a car he 
must plunk over the cash out of his own wallet or go 
to some other fellow and borrow the cash. 

And tens of thousands of farmers borrowed the cash 
to purchase automobiles when dynamite wouldn't 
have moved them to borrow the cash to pay for farm 
implements. They borrowed from banks and they 
borrowed from usurers; they sold cattle and horses; 
they plastered their meadows and homesteads with 
mortgages. 

When this wave of auto buying for cash in the 
country set in, the implement manufacturers were 
more than amazed. They were stunned. Here was a 
new competitor they hadn't figured on — a competitor 
selling luxuries for cash, when they were compelled 
to sell necessities on long time. The selling of talking 
machines and pianos to the farmer was a trifling men- 
ace by comparison. Furthermore, the piano and talk- 
ing machine, as the sewing machine which preceded 
it, were sold on installments — a few dollars down on 
delivery and at the most a few dollars a month. The 
poultry on the farm could take care of these items, 
but the borrowing of ^700 to ^1500 in cash was a 

[60] 



margin of expense that the American hen couldn't 
take care of if she laid her blessed head off. 

How was this automobile menace met? Well, it 
wasn't exactly met — that is, so far as domestic trade 
was concerned. There didn't seem any direct, tan- 
gible way of meeting it. The gasoline pleasure car was 
burning its way out to the farm like a prairie fire, and 
the implement people simply stood aside and let the 
fire roar and race. 

Here is a little inventory of what one of the biggest 
men in the implement industry offers as his idea of a 
necessary equipment for the average i6o-acre farm: 

I 14-inch gang plow $ 60.00 

I 14-inch walking plow 14.00 

I 3-section harrow 18.00 

I 7-foot disk harrow 30.00 

1 corn planter 42.00 

2 riding cultivators, at $26 52.00 

I grain drill 100.00 

I 6-foot mower 50.00 

I sulky rake 25.00 

I grain binder 125.00 

I farm truck 30.00 

I farm wagon 100.00 

I wind mill 25 .00 

I manure spreader 1 15.00 

Total $786.00 

The total is approximately the average price the 
farmer has been paying for his automobile — paying 
cash. Also it is approximately the average price of the 
new small tractor, which also, in the beginning stages 
of its merchandising, must be sold for cash. 

The question comes up: Can the average 160-acre 
farm, or even the average 200-acre farm, support its nec- 
essary equipment of farm machinery, an automobile 
and a small tractor? If so, who's going to get the cash? 

[61] 



The farmer, having paid cash for both automobile 
and tractor, will pull in his purse strings tighter than 
ever when it comes to the purchase of farm imple- 
ments — no matter on what terms they are offered. 
And if the implement business gets itself on a cash 
basis he will buy still less than he might have bought 
on credit. This would seem to be a logical assumption. 

Not infrequently there are flaws in logical assump- 
tions if you don't take them apart a bit. Say the 
farmer has bought his automobile as a pleasure ve- 
hicle, and also as a very serviceable aid in getting 
about the country on necessary and important er- 
rands. He can use this automobile regardless of what 
farm implements he owns. His sons can drive it, so 
can his hired men, and very likely his wife and daugh- 
ters will learn to run it. It is not a personal luxury or a 
personal necessity, but a family luxury. 

But when it comes to taking on a tractor the case 
will be very different. There must be equipment at 
hand to make the tractor serviceable, to make it 
worth while from any angle. Unless it can pull a 
variety of tillage tools and harvesting machinery, 
provide power for corn shredders, corn shellers, silage 
cutters, cream separators, and divers other apparatus, 
it is going to be a good deal of a white elephant. 



62] 



IX 

Auto-mania on the Farm 

THE hope is entertained by optimistic leaders in 
the farm-machinery industry that the farmer 
will soon recover from his automobile-buying 
mania, or at least will open his eyes to a preference 
for farm machinery and tractors over automobiles. 
Having found that his new runabout toy cost him 
much more for maintenance than he counted on, and 
that it failed to bring in a cent of income, he should be 
in a susceptible frame of mind when it came to tack- 
ling him on the proposition of buying a tractor or 
keeping up his farm equipment. 

This is a happy thought, but when I told it to an 
automobile salesman he smiled on me pityingly and 
replied: 

"It works out that way only in the RoUo books. 
Once a car owner, always a car owner. City man or 
farmer, it makes no difference. Now that we've got 
the buzz-wagon down to the farmer's price, he's sold 
to the idea of horseless transportation for all eternity. 
He's paid out his share of the $250,000,000 spent on 
good roads during 191 5, and you may bet the last 
little copper in the bottom of your jeans that he isn't 
going to sit 'way back on the homestead piazza and 
watch the other fellow wear out those good roads. 

[63] 



^ 



He needs those good roads to haul his stuff to market 
and he and his family also need them to spin round on 
to see the country and visit the friends and neighbors. 

"And here's another little thing to speculate on/* 
said the automobile prophet. "The gasoline vehicle 
did more to bring the farmer good roads than any other 
single agency. Also, the good roads that have been 
built out into the country have added more value to 
the farm than the farmer has so far spent on automo- 
biles. The farmer buys a car and votes for good roads, 
and when the good roads come they pay for the car 
and lift a mortgage or two off the farm." 

"But surely," I interposed, "the novelty of having 
and running a car wears off in a good many cases." 

"Oh, yes," he returned, "possibly ten per cent of the 
farmers may lose their enthusiasm, but not so the good 
wife and the kids. The novelty doesn't wear off for 
one family in a hundred or for one family in a thou- 
sand. Novelty on the farm is a pretty scarce article 
and once you plant it in the shape of a little old last 
year's car it takes root and flourishes and won't be 
pulled up or torn down save by cataclysm, holocaust 
or flood." 

Pertinent to this observation was the remark of one 
of the biggest men in the farm-implement business. 
He said: 

"To illustrate the sort of snag the automobile has 
been in our path I'll tell you the case of Smithers, who 
may be any one of a thousand salesmen that are push- 
ing our line. 

"Smithers has looked round the farm and sized up 
the low state of the mechanical equipment. He has 

[64] 



talked Farmer Rice up to the buying point and is just 
about to clinch the sale when Mrs. Farmer Rice rustles 
out of the kitchen and butts into the conversation. 

"'John/ she says, 'remember your promise. You 
don't need a new binder and you don't need a new 
manure spreader. You said yourself you could patch 
up what you've got and make it do for another season. 
And we are going to get that automobile.' 

*'*Well, I guess that's so,' says John. * Sorry, Mr. 
Smithers, but I won't order any more machinery now. 
Come round again next season.' 

"And if Smithers goes round next season he'll 
probably find that Farmer Rice and Mrs. Farmer Rice 
and all the Rice kids are cruising round the country in 
their car." 

"But don't you think," I asked, "that the automo- 
bile has educated the farmer in mechanics sufficiently 
to awaken him to the advantages of better farm ma- 
chinery? Also, isn't the care of a car teaching him 
something of distinct value in regard to the care of his 
farm machinery?" 

"To some extent, but the influence for good will be 
very gradual, also very vague, like all overthrows of 
habit. You won't be able to point it out or to put your 
finger on it. The man who has courage and conviction 
to look far ahead may bank on it to advantage, but he 
will be the hundredth man. Few if any of us can 
gather any rainbows from the automobile industry 
today. 

"We should like to figure it out this way: The 
farmer wants an automobile, but can't afford it. He 
could afford it if he would raise more and better crops. 
s [65] 



He could raise more and better crops if he had better 
mechanical equipment. With the profits from more 
and better crops he could buy his automobile. 

''Could anything in the realm of logic be clearer 
and simpler.? Farm machinery, a necessity, actually 
part of the farmer's factory equipment, should be 
paid for as a fixed charge on the farm. The auto- 
mobile, a luxury, should be paid for out of profits or 
surplus. 

*'But the way it has been working out is the dia- 
metric reverse. The results are psychological rather 
than logical, sentimental rather than sensible. Long 
credits may be the root of this evil that has come upon 
us, but it is going to be a master job to tear up those 
roots and insert in their place something big enough 
and strong enough to maintain the great expansion of 
our industry." 

'* But surely he is gaining knowledge all the time on 
how to finance purchases to his advantage on a cash 
basis?" 

''Another theory you cannot accept on its face 
value. The American farmer is the best long-time- 
credit getter in the known world. He would not have 
acquired the habit of paying cash for automobiles 
could he have obtained them on credit. And the time 
may come when he will be able to purchase his car on 
time from some manufacturers who feel inclined to 
take the risk of long credits. The leaders have made 
enormous profits and have piled up big surpluses. 
The change will come when they have reached the 
saturation point in feeding out automobiles on a cash- 
purchase basis. 

[66 1 



"The big makers have expanded tremendously on 
production. Just as soon as their cash market slows 
up they must devise some other means of pushing out 
their product. Voluntarily or involuntarily, they must 
kill off competition. In the farm-implement industry 
the little fellow has gone down because he couldn't 
stand the long-credit game. In the automobile in- 
dustry practically the same thing will happen. In my 
judgment there are not the possibilities of foreign 
expansion in the automobile industry that there were 
in the farm-implement industry. (The great export 
automobile business during the European war was 
abnormal.) Foreign expansion and the killing off of 
small competitors have kept us alive." 

"If the automobile industry comes down to a basis 
of long credits, will not the competition with farm 
implements be keener than ever.f"' 

"If it were possible to bring the automobile in- 
dustry down to the same basis of long credits on which 
we are operating there would be occasion for great 
and increasing gloom. But the automobile can never 
be sold as we are selling tillage and harvesting ma- 
chinery. The automobile is too risky and costly a 
product, even at an average price of ^500. I don't 
believe the manufacturer will be able to ship autos out 
on consignment; certainly the dealers will never be 
able to sell them on open account. 

"Automobile manufacturers have begun to finance 
intermediary money lenders — a sort of banking insti- 
tution that will lend to the purchaser and spht com- 
missions with the dealer, charging sufficient interest 
to cover possible losses from bad accounts." 

I 67] 



Since I had this Httle talk time-payment plans for 
the financing of automobile sales have come into a 
good deal of prominence. For several years, in all the 
big cities, there have been private concerns lending 
money to automobile purchasers on their notes, but 
the business these concerns have been doing has been 
comparatively insignificant — that is, speaking for the 
country at large. An exception should be made in the 
case of California, where the installment method of 
sales has made big gains in the past few years, with 
the result that at the beginning of 1916 it was said 
almost fifty per cent of the automobile sales in the 
Golden State were installment-credit sales. 

We now learn that half a dozen leading automobile 
manufacturers have taken hold and begun to back 
these installment-selling schemes with millions of 
capital. The manufacturers have really directed the 
devising of a brand-new credit vehicle, which has been 
planned with great care for the special purpose of 
expanding the volume of sales. 

As an example take the case of a Detroit credit 
sales company launched in November, 1915. Its chief 
function is to afford discount facilities for the auto- 
mobile dealer. This is how the plan works out in the 
purchase of a ^750 car: 

The prospective purchaser stipulates with the dealer 
to pay ^775 as a time price. The purchaser then fills 
out a form in which he states the particulars of his 
responsibilities. Then he signs a chattel mortgage, 
stipulating that if he fails to keep up the payments on 
the car the dealer is privileged to foreclose and re- 
possess the car. Having signed this mortgage the 

[68] 



purchaser further commits himself to payment by 
signing eight notes: A one-month note for fifty dol- 
lars; a two-month note, a three-month note and a 
four-month note for sixty dollars each; a five-month 
note and a six-month note for sixty-five dollars each; 
a seven-month note and an eight-month note for 
seventy-five dollars each. The total in notes is ^510, 
the ten dollars being a supplemental interest charge. 

Having acquired these notes the dealer turns them 
over to the securities concern to be discounted. Re- 
member, in the first instance the dealer has taken up 
the bill of lading on the car shipped to him by the 
factory or branch-house distributor of the factory and 
has paid cash to the extent of ^630, which makes the 
commission to the dealer, on paper at least, ^120. 

The installment purchaser has paid him $275 in 
cash, but twenty-five dollars of this goes to the securi- 
ties company to cover insurance and what you might 
call risk interest. There is too much complicated book- 
keeping to explain all this. The dealer doesn't send 
on any of his cash, however. What he sends is the 
$510 in notes. The securities company discounts these 
notes, charging a discount fee of $7.50. Then the 
securities company deducts the twenty-five dollars 
insurance and interest charge. Furthermore it deducts 
$100 for what is called a "deferred certificate." Al- 
together, then, the securities company takes out 
$132.50 and sends the remainder in cash to the dealer. 
With this remainder goes the ''deferred certificate." 

This "deferred certificate" is virtually a promise 
by the securities company to pay back $100 to the 
dealer when all the installment notes have been paid. 

[69] 



But it is not necessary for the dealer to stick this cer- 
tificate away as idle paper, convertible into cash only 
after all the notes have been paid. He may indorse 
this certificate and return it to the securities company 
to be discounted at five per cent. Following this proc- 
ess out to the end, the dealer has obtained in cash the 
installment price of the car less twenty-five dollars 
for interest and insurance, $7.50 for discount charges 
on the note and five dollars for discount charges on the 
"deferred certificate." 

It should be of interest to both the farmer and the 
implement manufacturer to learn that in the case of 
sales to farmers the dealer cannot discount the "de- 
ferred certificate, " but must hold it until all the notes 
are paid. 

There is also a separate installment plan for farmers, 
by which payments on the farmer's notes are deferred 
till harvest time, an arrangement somewhat similar to 
the long-credits sales by the implement manufacturer. 
The important difference is that the manufacturer is 
not holding the bag for the dealer. 



70] 



I 



X 

A $200,000fi00 Burden 

"^Y ZEBRAS laid eggs and hatched out giraffes it'd 
be mighty surprisin'/' quoth Lon the Pessimist, 
"but it wouldn't be nary a bit more surprisin' 
than if Jed Peck, Wilbur Smith, Ted Willys and Old 
Man Proudfit walked into my store and plunked down 
cold ringin' cash for four ridin* plows, then backed up 
their wagons to my door and carried them plows out 
and loaded 'em on board. No, sir; that sort o' trans- 
action would stump me total deaf, dumb and blind 
and call for me to hobble round on crutches or else 
take to my bed with ager and chills. 

"An' what's more, ef I should take that cold ringin' 
cash, pile it up neat on the counter and then deduct 
my bit of profit an' sweep it into the till, and then and 
thereafter pack the big remainder of that clankin' coin 
into a package an' ship it post express to the imple- 
ment manufacturer, it ain't to be reckoned on what 
would happen to the mind, soul an' body o' that same 
implement manufacturer. It'd just bust him cross- 
wise an' blow him into powder. 

"But it won't never happen that way," concluded 
Lon the Pessimist. "Not on the basis o' present 
prices o' farm implements an' present methods o' 
forcin' them into my hands when I ain't none too 

[71] 



anxious to stock up with 'em, knowin' there's no eager, | 
immedjut demand for 'em Hke in the case of bakers' 
doughnuts and soft crullers. 

*'Cash for farm implements is not comin' voluntary 
from Jed Peck and Old Man Proudfit to my counter — 
leastwise not in this yere mortal period while I can 
buy 'em on time and sell 'em on time. The cash-pay- 
ment idea has got to be worked out up in the factory 
and then put over under stiff pressure or else you'll 
never see nothin' to resemble it in your day or mine." 

This crude philosophy comes mighty near punctur- 
ing the bull's-eye. The great threatened crusade for 
shortening credits is not coming from the farm. If it 
is coming from anywhere it must come from the manu- 
facturer. He must provide the band and marshal the 
forces to put it over. And it must be a concerted effort, 
a get-together movement. Big as some of the great 
implement concerns are, none is big enough to tackle 
the job alone. 

If they could all get together in a cozy little party 
and fix prices and divide up territory and exchange 
credit lists of dealers and cut out oodles of waste due 
to frenzied competition their problem would be a 
mighty soft one, seemingly. But there are many ob- 
stacles in the way of this. 

There are Federal laws and state laws that would 
deny the privilege of holding such a love feast and 
putting through such a serene plan. And it is mighty 
well for the farmer, the dealer and the small competi- 
tor that there are certain and specific legal lets and 
hindrances to too much combination and monopoliza- 
tion. If big men would only use big power in a big, 

[72] 



broad way things might be diflPerent. But they don*t, 
and are not likely to until the golden dawn of that 
Golden Age when the Golden Rule shall be the most 
natural of human impulses. 

In discussing the problem of shortening credits for 
farm implements down to a cash basis, you don't 
quite get anywhere beyond the vague notion that it 
should be done, but isn't. All agree that it is vitally 
important, but, like so many vitally important things 
in life and government, it must be come to gradually. 

Discussing the subject with C. S. Brantingham, 
president of the Emerson-Brantingham Company, I 
found that he was hopeful of a remedy, but that he was 
naturally cautious and diffident on the score of letting 
his optimism run away with him. 

He had prepared a paper for the manufacturers' 
convention in which he suggested the great need of a 
remedy, but offered no plan. He said: 

''There is employed in the farm-machinery business 
today more than enough capital to finance the business 
as other businesses are financed, and not borrow a 
dollar except possibly during the spring season. Al- 
most every farm-machinery manufacturing concern 
that is sound financially has nearly two dollars of 
receivables for every dollar it owes, also has one dollar 
of inventory for every dollar it owes, which makes it a 
good, strong financial risk. 

"Yet more than $100,000,000 of borrowed money is 
used by the farm-machinery manufacturers to carry 
on their business, while they are extending credits 
that aggregate nearly $200,000,000, half of which is 
wholly unnecessary. 

[73] 



"The elimination of one-half of these credits — 
approximately ^100,000,000 — will easily and readily 
finance the farm-machinery business and is in fact 
the only true, sound, practical solution. If acted upon 
in earnest by all the members of this [manufacturers'] 
association it will place the credit of its members high 
in the preferred class and make the industry the 
strong, sound, basic industry it is, and relieve a tre- 
mendous strain from the men engaged in the general 
management of the business. 

^^ It will enable them to sell their products cheaper to 
the farmer. 

"The proper place for farmers to seek credit is with 
their local bankers, who have increased in number and 
strength in their various communities and are today 
prosperous. 

"If the farmers would seek this credit from the 
local bankers, and the local bankers should give it, the 
local bankers could then employ their funds profitably 
at home instead of going to the cities to buy com- 
mercial paper — often commercial paper made by the 
farm-machinery companies to raise funds to carry 
credits extended to farmers. 

"The funds in the country banks are today largely 
deposited by farmers who were former borrowers. 

"A shortening of credits would encourage good men 
to remain in the retail implement business and would 
discourage and eliminate the poor ones who establish 
themselves on this credit system. 

"If manufacturers, dealers and farmers will give 
this question serious consideration they must admit 
that farm machinery should more properly be sold 

[74] 



for cash than any other product, for it is actually the 
foundation of almost all wealth. 

''The practice of carrying unsold goods from spring 
to fall and from fall to spring is not practised by any 
other standard industry and is unsound in principle. 

''It all goes to promote overloading the dealer and 
forcing on the farmer what he does not need. 

"It causes overexpansion of factories and straining 
of credits. In the long run it does not increase net 
profits. 

"In former years farm-machinery manufacturers 
listened to the argument that the farmer needed time 
until the crops were harvested to obtain the funds 
necessary to pay for his machinery. 

"The automobile and farm-equipment manufac- 
turers, in establishing their business, have taken a 
different view and have proved conclusively that the 
farmer does not need this long-time credit. Has he not 
shown his ability to pay cash for his automobiles and 
other purchases when required to do so.^ 

"If we continue the long terms of the past it means 
that we are using our capital and credit to help finance 
those shorter-term lines. A shortening of terms more 
nearly to a cash basis will bring the dealer's prices 
more nearly to those of the catalogue houses, which 
are doing farm-machinery business on a cash-in- 
advance basis." 

"An immediate shortening, making full correction, 
may be unwise, but a gradual shortening of terms 
along sensible lines so that a full correction could be 
obtained in two or three years would be of the greatest 
possible benefit to all concerned. 

[7Sl 



"The farmer should not only welcome and join in 
this readjustment, but should insist that the industry 
upon which he depends for his equipment with which 
to feed the world should be furnished him on the most 
economical basis possible, which we all know is cash 
or its equivalent. 

"If our Government desires to assist the farmer let 
it do so by permitting the manufacturers, dealers and 
farmers to enter into agreement for the purpose of 
correcting this system, and lead in a campaign of 
education to bring about this result." 

Mr. Brantingham added the further suggestion 
that the manufacturers themselves appoint a strong 
committee to devote their energy in the direction of 
rounding out some remedy to relieve the curse of long 
credits. 

All the big implement men I talked with expressed 
the belief that the country bankers could help a lot if 
they only would. It was pointed out that the country 
banker helped in the automobile game by lending the 
farmer money with which to make cash purchases. 
It was not pointed out that the country banker was 
more or less of a passive instrument in financing the 
purchase of motor cars for the farm. Nor was it men- 
tioned that one automobile manufacturer sent millions 
of dollars in cash to the country banks in one state to 
finance the purchase of cars. 

This manufacturer did not specify when he loaned 
this money to the country banks to be reloaned to 
farmers that the money should be provided only for 
the purchase of his own cars. He was able to estimate 
from statistics gathered by his sales forces that his 

[76] 



make of car sold two to one over any other make in 
that territory. If the lending of money to the country 
banks would greatly increase the sales of his car in that 
state, he would reap the major benefits. His profits 
would be so great that he wouldn't have to worry 
about the small benefits his rivals might obtain. 

To be sure, this was an exceptional case. The manu- 
facturer who poured those millions into the country 
banks at a low rate of interest had made enormous 
profits and had piled up an immense surplus. More- 
over, he was selling a standardized product at a stan- 
dardized price. 

He made one price to all his dealers and pro- 
tected them in their assigned territory. He had no 
fear of imitative competition. His business organiza- 
tion had been built up into a great, solid, simplified 
structure. And the car he made was as well known 
as the first stanza of the Star Spangled Banner. 

Mr. Brantingham urges that there is an unnecessary 
$100,000,000 tied up in long credits to the farmer. 
How much of this $100,000,000 is carried in open 
accounts by dealers of questionable solvency it is im- 
possible to determine. Undoubtedly a considerable 
slice of it will never be liquidated into hard cash. 
These losses must be made up somehow. The farmer 
must bear his burdensome share of them or the im- 
plement industry could not go on. 

If the farmer could only be made to see what his 
solid-ivory habit of owing, whether he needs to owe 
or not, is costing him it would not require an endless 
process of experimental readjustment to convert him 
to purchasing for cash. 

[77] 



But there is too much confusion of standards in the 
implement game to permit him to see clearly. To 
begin with, quality standards are a pretty sad muddle, 
and price standards are a sadder mess. 

With no price standards hitched to quality stan- 
dards, how can the farmer be expected to obtain more 
than a blurred vision of the product he is purchasing? 



78 



XI 

The Sins of the Dealer 

SOME manufacturers will tell you that the dealer 
. is to blame for the price muddle. They say that 
the dealer who is shrewd enough to take advan- 
tage of cash discounts can fix a standard price low 
enough to meet the competition of the catalogue houses, 
cooperative buying clubs, or any other competitor that 
may bob up. They say also that the dealer who or- 
ganizes his business efficiently and makes intelligent 
use of service facilities offered him can maintain 
standard prices and at the same time earn splendid 
profits. 

Many dealers who are disinclined to take advantage 
of cash discounts return that this sort of argument 
is all rubbish. 

They declare that cash discounts are arranged all 
in favor of the manufacturer; that the discounts 
are so small as to be insignificant, and that if the 
dealers paid cash in advance of the sale of the imple- 
ments they purchased, they would find themselves 
with a lot of dead merchandise on their hands. They 
argue further that no cash discounts that are worth 
bothering about are offered unless a dealer overloads 
himself with stock it is a natural impossibility to 
sell. 

[79] 



f 



Theoretically, the dealer who stocks up with a car- 
load order at a time can save considerable in freight 
charges. The theory has worked out profitably in the 
case of the dealer who knew just what to buy in the 
way of additional lines, and who was able to ascertain 
from his bookkeeping the cost of handling and selling. 

The practice of foisting upon the dealer additional 
implements and jobbed side lines that the territory 
offered no call for has been insidious in the extreme. 
The saving in freight rates has been swallowed to the 
uttermost farthing, and left deep in the red by carry- 
over charges and depreciation mildew. In thousands 
of cases the result has been a further extension of 
credits rather than a shortening of credits. 

You would think, to hear a great many manu- 
facturers discuss the situation, that consignment and 
carry-over clauses were an invention of the dealer, in- 
stead of an inherent fault due to overloading and over- 
selling, failure to standardize quality and prices, and 
the multiproduction of sizes and varieties for which 
there is no sane excuse. 

That wild-eyed little old whirling dervish, F. Com- 
petition — the F. for Frenzied — is the excuse offered to 
explain away all of these sad-eyed specters of long 
credit. The manufacturer groans every time he learns 
that one of his dealers is selling automobiles for cash 
to farmer customers — the same customers who walk 
into his store and help themselves to plows, harrows 
and cultivators on time, in open account, with nary 
a scrap of paper to record the transaction. 

Many a dealer has been able to knock down hand- 
some cash profits from cash sales of automobiles simply 

[80] 



because he was able to take in farm implements on 
consignment with two fall datings, less a cash discount 
and six months' additional net. And the dealer will 
keep right on doing this as long as he can get the 
extension. 

Take the dealers through the South at the time 
Europe burst into flame and the price of cotton was 
shorn 'way down below production costs overnight. 
Thousands of dealers were stocked to the straining 
point with cultivating implements and all manner of 
tools, waiting for Mister Cotton Farmer to come in and 
cash his cotton to pay for last year's purchases, and 
thereupon, having paid for last year's purchases, to 
stock up again to the limit of what he expected to 
raise in the way of cotton the following season. 

But six-cent cotton wouldn't wipe the slate clean, 
wouldn't more than half cover all the divers and sun- 
dry obligations of debt. There were items for food 
and items for clothing; items for harness, items for 
hardware, items for candy and for tobacco; items for 
oil and occasionally items for grease, gasoline, spark 
plugs and tires; lastly there were items for farm im- 
plements. 

When Mister Cotton Farmer made his fall settle- 
ment of fifty cents on the dollar to the merchant, who 
got the money? The merchant, in the primary in- 
stance, but the merchant in his turn owed everybody. 
He owed for his food products, for clothing, for hard- 
ware, for every possible item he could owe for. He 
did not owe for gasoline and oil. The Rockefeller 
family collects every thirty days. Certain of the food 
purveyors collected in sixty or ninety days, or else 

6 [8i] 



^ 



shut down on the account. The clothing wholesalers 
also got what they could in sixty or ninety days. 

So it went on down the line till it came to the im- 
plement man. He was easy. There were no hungry 
mouths or goose-fleshed limbs or panting motor wag- 
ons crying for his product. Then he was of immemorial 
custom and habit patient. Maybe he got a nickel out 
of that shabby, war-bitten four-bit piece. Too often 
he didn't even get a glimmer of its existence. 

When all the cotton had been cashed in and Mister 
Cotton Farmer still owed heavily on last year's ac- 
count, the merchant he owed began to utter gloomy 
forebodings and also began to readjust his next year's 
credit scales. He allowed he would have to extend 
further credit for the winter's food supply, for a re- 
duced supply of clothing, and so on. 

But when it came to farm implements, he advised 
the farmer to get along the best way he could with the 
carry-over tools that were kicking round the farm. 
The farmer and his family thought so too. Hence 
there was the slimmest sort of picking for the imple- 
ment salesmen when they set out to push the usual 
seasonal quota for the South. 

The market wasn't there, notwithstanding the 
benevolent processes of distribution. But the fac- 
tories were all gaited up to the production of this 
quota. If the Southern market would not take it, it 
must be unloaded somewhere. Here was a big prob- 
lem for the sales manager — an immediate need for 
expanding into new territory. Some of the big con- 
cerns sent flying squadrons into South America and 
blazed new expansion trails in that direction. Other 

[82] 



big concerns kept eagle eyes open to catch sight of 
some tottering small competitor whose territory might 
be invaded and gobbled. Some smaller concerns that 
were able to slow up managed to curtail production. 

During all these periods of depression you will hear 
the honking wail of the dealer. Particularly you heard 
his plaintive cry in the South during the fall of 1914. 
Business had gone to the eternal or infernal bow- 
wows. 

Yet he didn't go down in any extraordinary num- 
ber, notwithstanding his uneconomic method of doing 
business. Why? For the simple reason that he had 
charged for his goods all the traffic would bear — one 
hundred per cent and often two hundred per cent 
profit. He had to, he proclaims, to carry his end of the 
gamble. He was selling merchandise against the 
possibility of collecting money for it a year hence. 
He was paying long-credit prices for his merchandise 
and in addition to that was assuming risks that were 
highly speculative. There was the cost of doing busi- 
ness, his living expenses, his luxuries, some surplus 
that might be lent out on bond or mortgage or in- 
vested in cotton land. The merchant who could lend 
money at twenty per cent was not going to pay cash 
for the sake of any ten per cent discount, and very 
frequently in the South it is possible to lend money 
at forty, fifty, sixty, eighty or one hundred per cent. 

The Comptroller of Currency recently revealed that 
more than 600 Southern banks charged on some of 
their loans twelve per cent and up, that sixty-seven 
banks had a maximum loan rate of from twenty-five to 
sixty per cent, that twenty-two banks charged between 

[83I 



sixty and one hundred per cent, and twenty-six banks 
had a maximum rate of one hundred per cent or more. 
These were national banks, mind you, not state banks 
or private banks, or local usurers of the Uriah Heep 
stamp. 

I have met merchants in the South who told me 
frankly that they never paid up on an account until 
the last possible minute. When they could make one 
hundred dollars in cash earn fifty dollars cash in six 
or eight months, why send up that hundred dollars 
cash to some implement manufacturer or implement 
jobber just for the sake of a miserly ten, fifteen or 
even thirty dollars cash discount.? 

The manufacturers feel that they have played 
banker long enough for the dealer — that is, they tell 
you that is the way they feel about it. So far they 
haven't felt sufficiently strong about it to pull in their 
credits to any great extent. There is that elusive, tied- 
to-a-long-leash $100,000,000 which they could use in 
their business to great advantage. The farmer is hold- 
ing out his share of it and the dealer is holding out his 
share of it, and both are paying heavy interest rates 
on it if they would only take the trouble to figure it 
out in simple arithmetic. 

There is an immense amount of ignorance and folly 
involved in this long-credit scheme of merchandising. 
The manufacturers admit they have made mistakes — 
and then shift the burden of responsibility by putting 
it up to the dealer and his slipshod methods of doing 
business. The dealer splits the buck in two and passes 
half along to the manufacturer and half along to the 
farmer. Over and above this the dealer has a special 

I84I 



grievance against the catalogue house and the new 
movement to organize cooperative buying clubs. 

As for the farmer, he has had very httle to say. 
He has done a lot of wood-sawing and quiet thinking, 
however, and in some unknown, mysterious way gets 
together sufficient cash every year to buy three or four 
hundred million dollars' worth of automobiles, gaso- 
line engines, stoves, hardware, steel roofing, furniture, 
talking machines, silos and pianos. 

More and more the farmer has been learning to buy 
for cash what he cannot buy any other way than for 
cash. He has followed his individual bent in this 
direction. The bankers have helped him out a little, 
but not any too beneficently — with, of course, nu- 
merous exceptions in the case of progressive bankers 
who have made it their business to study farms and 
farming in its present-day aspects. 



[8sl 



T] 
: 



XII 

Lack of Quality or Price Standards 

"^ \ ^HERE'S too many animiles," said an Arkan- 
sas philosopher who never in his Hfe leaned 
against anything harder than a hne of least 
resistance. *' There's too many superflu's animiles for 
any use. If a feller could only have a mule that'd bark 
like a dog, give milk like a cow, cut up into beef on one 
side o' him and into pork on t'other side, it'd jest save 
tremendjus in the labor an' expense o' farmin'." 

This is the sort of dictum you might expect to 
emerge from a furze of knotty and tangled whiskers 
that still luxuriate in timbered valleys or on bleak 
hill-knobs. Yet the idea contained has been applied to 
the retail-dealer situation by more than one manu- 
facturer of farm implements. 

There are too few of what you might call general- 
efficiency dealers. There are too many nondescript, 
hit-or-miss dealers who really never had any business 
in trade and whose days in trade are numbered from 
the moment of their entrance into business. 

But the nondescript, happy-go-lucky, let-it-go-at- 
that type of dealer is passing. Harvesters of statistics 
in and out of the trade have the figures to prove it. 
The modern efficiency pace is grinding him out, but 
not by a swift, relentless process of annihilation. 

[86] 



There is no vanishing point in sight. Elimination is 
necessarily a slow weeding out — far too slow to please 
the big implement manufacturers. They would like 
to see a new race of live-wire dealers born overnight, 
sprung up like Jason's warriors from an efficiency seed 
bed, every one of them a keen, sharp business man 
amply provided with capital. 

But they will wait in vain for this sort of magic. 
Given the power to perform the miracle themselves, 
they would lack the nerve. They have used the so- 
called *' incompetent" dealer in their business for 
many decades and seemingly have thrived on him. 
They have kept tabs on his inefficiency and reckoned 
the averages of his failures. But he has served them 
mightily in their methods of expansion. 

That was during the age of long credits. 

Now that the age of long credits is said to be re- 
ceding down a dim vista, the farmer-agent or agent- 
farmer, the drive-about, gad-about "merchant" with 
no store or stock, must be relegated to the dis- 
card. And with him must go the little desultory store- 
keeper who has no more use for system and method in 
his business than a banker has for wooden money. 

If you are discussing the dealer problem scientific- 
ally you must class these likely discards as the unfit. 
If you are taking up the subject on a basis more human 
than scientific you might class them as unfortunate 
or unadaptable or misguided or something of the sort. 
There are grades and degrees of unfitness, as there are 
grades and degrees of misfortune and unadaptability. 
From any and all standpoints there is room for con- 
troversy. 

[87l 



There are some facts, however, upon which we can 
put our fingers and through which we can drive spikes 
to keep them where we can see them and ponder on 
them. According to a 1910 estimate, there were in the 
United States at the beginning of this decade approxi- 
mately 45,000 dealers selling farm implements and 
hardware of infinite kinds, qualities, styles and pat- 
terns. We will use the term "dealer" as a means of 
general classification, including the big and the little, 
the fit and the unfit retailer; also including all the 
heterogeneous collection of dealer agents. 

We learn that about 10,000 of these dealers fell by 
the wayside in five years. At least, they vanished from 
the lists. An up-to-date census of dealers, we are in- 
formed by an authority on the subject, would include 
only 35,000 or so names. And not more than 20,000 
of the present-day list of 35,000 dealers are what 
you might classify as "regular merchants,'' possessing 
tangible capital to do business on, carrying stock and 
repair parts and rendering service. 

This gives us about 15,000 dealer agents. Five 
years ago, out of 45,000 dealers of all sorts, approxi- 
mately 25,000 were dealer agents. This would seem 
to give us the simplest sort of sum in addition and 
subtraction. No need to get out pad or pencil. You 
have it in a flash that the vanished 10,000 were dealer 
agents. It also seems to figure out neatly that the 
20,000 dealer merchants who were doing business five 
years ago are still in business today. 

But it is not so simple as that. Of the twenty-five 
per cent of dealers of all sorts who go out of busi- 
ness everv year, a considerable percentage are in the 

[88] 



so-called merchant class. Likewise there are many 
dealer agents who graduate into the merchant class 
and thrive. I could name a dozen of these whom I 
know personally in a dozen different states, every one 
of them a live-wire hustler. 

If you ask an implement manufacturer why so 
many hopeless or foredoomed-to-failure dealer agents 
came into the field he will reply promptly: 

"There were not enough good dealers to go round.'* 

The manufacturer could not wait for the education, 
training and trying-out of retailers. He was hitting up 
production at too fast a clip to afford to dispense with 
the little dealer. The excess product had to be sold. 
When the established merchant was stocked to the 
guards there was still a big surplus to dispose of. So 
*' salesmen" were picked up helter-skelter and sent 
out scouting for business among their friends and 
relatives. 

Several years ago it was estimated that 70 per cent 
of the dealers were former farmers. This included all 
types. As to the process of developing former farmers 
into dealers, here is a pithy commentary on the sub- 
ject by a man who made a careful investigation of the 
implement industry: 

"Farmer Jones sells his farm and comes to the city 
to educate his children and enjoy the advantage of 
urban life. He soon becomes restless and seeks em- 
ployment. He knows nothing about general merchan- 
dise, but he thinks he does know something about 
agricultural implements. It is easy to get started. 
In fact, some implement solicitor may have offered 
the suggestion to him. 

[89] 



"He soon has a stock of goods in hand, received on 
varying terms that are confusing, but he says to him- 
self:^ 

"*I can't quite remember all these terms; but in 
general, I can sell the goods first and pay for them 
afterward.' He does not know how to figure overhead 
expense. If he sells a forty-two dollar machine for 
forty-five dollars he is apt to think that he has made 
three dollars. 

"Meanwhile he takes his living out of the business. 
The credits are so long and settlements are so easily 
evaded that he probably loses all he has before he 
realizes what is happening, and then another farmer 
moves in from the country to take his place.'' 

The flat statement that there were not enough deal- 
ers to go round cannot be accepted entirely at its 
face value. 

From the farmer's outlook there seemed ample 
dealers to go round. Even in tiny hamlets there 
seemed a surplusage of dealers, some carrying one line 
and some carrying another. 

But if the farmer had looked into it he would have 
discovered that the dealers he knew and dealt with 
represented only a scanty handful of the little army 
of competing manufacturers. If a competing manu- 
facturer saw rich possibilities in any district he im- 
mediately planned an invasion of that district. If the 
established merchant dealers were stocked up with 
other lines in such a way that they could not afford 
to take on a new line the invader resorted to the simple 
method of appointing a farmer-agent. Often he per- 
suaded some retired farmer to invest his capital in a 

[90] 



store, extending him liberal credit to aid him in 
launching the enterprise. 

A large percentage of these ''new beginners" were 
bound to fail, but they were also bound to make some 
sales. Friends and relatives would buy from them for 
a while. And when they failed the chances were even 
that some other fellows could be brought in to carry 
along the line and the business until they, too, got 
up against it because of unbusinesslike methods and 
general unfitness as merchants. 

The manufacturer didn't always get his money back, 
but he managed somehow to stiffen up his prices so as 
to stand the general average of losses. The bigger the 
organization behind him the smaller the average of 
losses from this method of merchandising; also the 
greater opportunity of crowding out other lines and 
taking possession of the established merchant dealers. 

When such great concerns as Deere & Company 
had taken on a multiplicity of allied lines they were 
able to present a new argument in merchandising 
economies to the dealer, an argument which you 
might call the carlot inducement. They could prove 
by the simplest sort of mathematics to the dealer who 
was buying a dozen different lines from a dozen dif- 
ferent manufacturers in widely scattered localities 
that there must be a distinct advantage in buying all 
these lines from a single purveyor, who shipped from a 
single branch-house point of distribution or from a 
centrally located factory. 

This sort of merchandising, naturally, excludes the 
farmer-agent, and no doubt it assures definite econo- 
mies for the dealer. There is, however, an always- 

[91] 



present danger of overloading. The dealer who is 
pretty sure to benefit by the available economies is 
the dealer who can estimate his selling costs accu- 
ately and who handles his credit arrangements with 
customers along systematized lines. This is taking 
for granted that he has skill in pushing his wares. 



[92I 



XIII 

Sir James, Jim and No- Count Jimmy 

THE problem of retail prices has always been 
more or less of a perplexing puzzle — too fre- 
quently an unsolvable one for the general run 
of dealers. An inexperienced dealer has little or 
nothing to guide him as to what retail prices should be. 
He is a babe in the woods when it comes to figuring 
selling costs. Nor has he more than a vague notion of 
quality standards. 

Wholesale prices are maintained firmly if not in- 
flexibly by the large companies and may be said to 
be pretty well standardized. Quality for quaHty and 
freights considered, there is very little variation in the 
wholesale prices of old, staple lines. Though every 
separate implement made may have some specific 
selling point, when you get down to the raw basis of 
comparisons there is little difference in the quality and 
the prices of staple goods. 

But when it comes to retailing farm implements the 
situation has been and still is to a large extent vastly 
otherwise. The dealer who figures anything above the 
wholesale cost as a profit soon sells himself into bank- 
ruptcy. The peddler who carries his wares in a pack 
on his back and sleeps under a roadside hedge or in a 
convenient haymow or barn can adopt this primitive 

[93] 



method of merchandising and get away with it, and 
now and then the farmer-agent may eke out a pre- 
carious existence on roughly calculated profits. But 
no merchant dealer can ever know where he stands 
unless he adopts system and careful bookkeeping and 
can distinguish between a real and an imaginary 
profit. 

It often happens that profits on the same machine 
in the same county will vary from fifteen to twenty 
per cent. 

Say Farmer Riddle goes to Dealer Jones and gets a 
price of twenty-five dollars for a fairly well-known 
staple implement. If Farmer Riddle is at all given to 
shrewdness he will look round a bit and see if he cannot 
beat that price. He will drop in on Dealer Green and 
tell him that Dealer Jones offered him a price of 
twenty-three dollars. If Dealer Green is anxious to 
sell he will meet the cut and go it one better, bringing 
the price down to twenty-two dollars. If Farmer 
Riddle is a persistent cheapener and doesn't care how 
he squanders his time he'll hunt up Dealer Jones again 
and tell him that Dealer Green has offered to sell the 
identical implement at twenty dollars. 

If Dealer Jones is a greenhorn and can't see through 
these little subtleties he is very apt to let the imple- 
ment go at twenty dollars, though it cost him nineteen 
dollars. 

He may make mental note that he is a dollar 
ahead on the transaction, when as a matter of fact he 
is about three dollars behind — that is, figuring that 
his selling costs were somewhere in the neighborhood 
of twenty per cent. 

[94] 



Dealers and manufacturers say it would be im- 
possible to attempt to standardize retail prices, just 
as it is impossible to standardize character and sol- 
vency in purchasers and business ability in dealers. If 
a dealer is selling two identical articles at the same 
time to two different customers he is very likely to 
make two different prices because of the different 
characters of the customers. 

He knows Farmer X to be entirely solvent and able 
to meet his obligations whether his crops are bumper 
or otherwise. In the case of Farmer Y he believes that 
anything he sells him on time entails a definite risk. 
So, to square the equation, he makes the price ten 
dollars to Farmer X and fourteen dollars to Farmer Y. 

Down in Mississippi I met a small country merchant 
who sold to a little community of cotton growers a 
line of "watch-charm" plows and "manicuring" culti- 
vators. The cotton growers were all more or less in 
debt to the merchant. Some owed more than others. 
Some were lazier than others. Some had large families 
and some had small families. Some were newcomers 
and had the moving habit. Some were drunkards and 
some were sober and fairly industrious. 

"I got 'em all listed as risks," said this merchant, 
"and I charge 'em for these plows according to the 
risk. Sometimes I get fifteen or twenty different 
prices for the same article." 

"And the fellow who is hardest up and able to pay 
the least pays the most?" I asked. 

"Sure thing," he replied. 

"And yet you wonder why these same fellows turn 
handsprings and utter war whoops when they get 

l9Sl 



hold of a mail-order catalogue and read off the stan- 
dardized prices for cash sales." 

**rm not worrying about catalogue houses,'* he 
returned. "If any of my customers catch up on the 
books and get a little cash ahead you'll find me right 
round when the coin begins to clink. I've got a full 
line of these catalogues right in my store and I read 
'em faithful. 

"I know the prices and can figure out the freight 
rates, and when it comes to making a cash sale to a 
cash customer I can name a price that'll save postage 
and freight." 

**But don't your customers ever get together and 
compare notes on the diversity of prices they are 
paying for the same article .f"' 

''Not often; not often enough to worry over. A 
fellow who's paying high simply because he's poor 
pay isn't apt to gossip much about how he's stung. 
The bargain getters are the noisy folk." 

This quaint, keen Mississippian is not offered as a 
dealer t3^pe. He appeared to be too much of a one- 
piece individual mechanism to be called a type. But 
his selling methods were somewhat typical of those in a 
large area of the South, where retail prices of farm 
implements are about as standard as the weight of 
razorback pigs. 

To visualize the average implement dealer is a large 
order. We learn from careful investigators that the 
retail-implement trade is at its worst in the New Eng- 
land States and that it grows steadily better as one 
goes westward, until it appears at its best beyond the 
Mississippi. 

[96I 



The implement business has not thrived particularly 
in the New England area because there is little demand 
for the larger implements, and because the factories 
and transfer houses are so near at hand that goods can 
be quickly obtained. Hence, instead of an exclusive 
implement dealer with a good stock you are more 
apt to find a hardware or general-store merchant, 
or perhaps a blacksmith or farmer, carrying a few 
samples. More than sixty per cent of the farm-imple- 
ment business in New England is said to be in the 
hands of men who have less than ^300 invested. 

A 1916 tabulation of Eastern dealers showed 4500 in 
the coast states, taking in New England and states as 
far south as the Carolinas. Only about 2000 of these 
were listed as "regular merchants," carrying stock in 
trade and conducting real mercantile business. As far 
back as 1908 Illinois alone listed more than 1600 sure- 
to-goodness dealers. As you cross the Potomac or get 
out into the agricultural backbone of America the 
farmer-agents begin to disappear. At least they thin 
out greatly in number. 

The business is at its best beyond the line of 
jobbing centers — Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, 
Dallas — and these favored areas in turn diminish as 
one leaves the great farming field and passes into 
mountainous and primitive conditions. 

Retail trade reaches its maximum in those cities of 
the great West that are located on a trunk line far 
from any cross or parallel railroads. The distance 
from factory and transfer house necessitates the carry- 
ing of a large stock, and as there is little ready money 
among the farmers, extended credits must be granted. 
7 [97] 



A big business may be done, but the large stocks and 
long credits require much capital — sometimes as much 
as $100,000. The risks are heavy because of the little 
ready money obtainable, and a crop failure means the 
carrying over of nearly all accounts for an extra year. 
Repeated crop failures almost inevitably write bank- 
rupt over the shop door. 

An attempt to classify the implement dealer is more 
than likely to lead you into interminable ramifications. 
At a recent gathering of farm-implement manufac- 
turers P. T. Rathbun presented three classifications 
that make a distinct appeal to the imagination. He 
visualized three grades of dealers, not by card-index 
letters or numbers, but as Sir James, Jim and 
Jimmy. 

Sir James is the ideal of the trade, who has attained 
the knighthood of success. He has ample capital to 
conduct a thriving business. His business organiza- 
tion is almost of copy-book perfection. He carries a 
good stock, well housed and attractively displayed. 
He has adequate help, picked and trained for efficiency. 
His stock is intelligently priced and aggressively 
pushed. He gives credit where credit is due, but in- 
sistently and incessantly preaches the gospel of cash- 
purchase benefits. He takes advantage of cash dis- 
counts almost invariably and in giving credit does so 
only in return for bankable paper. He can figure his 
overhead and selling costs down to a margin of mills, 
and just a glance at his books from day to day will 
tell him where he stands. 

He is so awfully good at the game, really, that he is 
almost too good to be true. But there are a good many 

foSl 



of him out in the Western territories, and one of the 
best signs of the times is that he is notably on the in- 
crease. Dealer associations and dealer organizations 
are doing much to increase his kind. 

Coming down from Sir James to Jim is quite a 
descent, but it lands us among plain folks who make 
up the vast majority of humankind and always will. 
Jim is the average modern implement man. 

Jim is typical of that great army of dealers who are 
ambitious to do a clean, honorable, profitable retail 
implement-and-vehicle business; who have homes they 
love to support; families they hope and plan to be- 
come honorable, educated and worthy citizens; com- 
munities where their all in material interests is in- 
vested, which they long to see aggressive communities, 
a worthy and satisfactory place in which to raise a 
family and call home. 

'*Jim," to quote Mr. Rathbun, "is not devoid of 
either capital or ability, though in common with most 
of the world perhaps is not burdened with either. He 
knows goods and knows men — at least, his customers. 
He combines more than you have the right to expect — 
the mechanic, the credit man, the banker, the buffer 
between maker and user of your wares. 

"He has had enough of complaint to sour a less 
well-balanced nature, enough of disappointment and 
discouragement to dishearten a man of less character 
and strength; enough of imposition to make him dis- 
trust all mankind were he himself less worthy of the 
full confidence of both manufacturer and farmer; and, 
withal, enough of hard work to make him the man of 
strength he is. 

[99I 



**He has a stock of goods — perhaps too large, at 
least often too expensive; some display system — 
usually not beyond improvement; a general idea of 
what business costs are, and an ambition to find that 
elusive end we call * profit.' He is aggressive, ambi- 
tious, trustful and trustworthy, as honest as any 
similar number of men on earth — is Jim the Imple- 
ment Man.'' 

This brings us down to poor Jimmy — Jimmy the 
Goat. Anyhow, Jimmy will tell you he's the goat. 
There's no easier way to explain away your short- 
comings and misfortunes than by a shrug of the shoul- 
ders and a plaintive wail: "Oh, I'm the goat!" Per- 
tinently, then, the Rathbun definition of Jimmy is 
interesting: 

*'Much, too much, of the happy-go-lucky, for- 
profit-trusting-to-Providence-and-accident sort. Too 
intimate with his trade to deny an extension of credit 
on past-due accounts; too busy to acquaint himself 
with costs and business methods. A disposer of goods, 
but never a profit gatherer." 

This is short and pithy, but the trouble with most of 
us is that we never get a good near-hand view of 
Jimmy. We no sooner look him up and get his focus 
than Bang! he goes broke. And once he is down all 
the strong survivors take a wallop at him. 

And if you looked round pretty close with an inspired 
regard you'd see that gaunt, ghoulish specter, the 
grim banshee of the trade, Long Credits, sitting on 
Jimmy's chest, taking Jimmy's word for it that he is 
the goat, and shearing him down to the subcutaneous 
tissue of his hide. 

I 100 ] 



I 



XIV 

A Hoosier Who Woke Up 

IF TWEEDLEDUM and Tweedledee had been Imple- 
ment dealers, they would undoubtedly have amused 
the populace. When Alice in her journey Through 
the Looking-Glass came upon Tweedledum and Twee- 
dledee they staged a terrifying battle for her. The two 
chubby youths adorned themselves in quantities of 
hardware and then lambasted each other all over the 
lot. They didn't know what they were scrapping about, 
and the notion didn't reach into their gray matter to 
reason it out. They had just got into the habit of it, 
and while they made a great din the wounds inflicted 
were trifling. 

A good many hundreds if not thousands of imple- 
ment dealers are just as futile in their contests and 
rivalries as the mythical twins, Tweedledum and 
Tweedledee. 

They don't bounce out into Main Street draped 
with washboilers and kettle covers and hammer one 
another with long-handled agateware spoons, but 
they do carry on idle and profitless price-cutting con- 
tests and spring-sale shindigs, and they likewise 
knock one another's lines and methods of doing busi- 
ness without ever being able to ascertain any benefits 
from the process. 

[lOl] 



And the farmer looks on and grins and takes every 
extra inch of long-time credit and price reduction he 
can get out of it. 

The farmer also extracts all the free service he can 
derive from these bootless rivalries, which brings us 
to a mighty important factor in the modern merchan- 
dising of farm implements. 

Let us turn to our business primers and find out 
what S-E-R-V-I-C-E spells. Why, it spells service, of 
course, and service is just service and nothing else. 
It means going out to the farmer's farm and setring 
up his plows and cultivators, his manure spreaders and | 
corn shellers, his stationary engines and tractors, and 
so on. Likewise it means going out to the farm to 
screw up a loose nut, or to readjust a bad hitch. 
Furthermore, it means first aid to the injured imple- 
ment, the dupHcation of parts that break. 

But better than everything, you hear, it means 
something that the catalogue house cannot give, some- 
thing that the cooperative buying clubs cannot and 
do not provide, something that the automobile dealer 
does not attempt to give — save in a very small way, 
and then youVe got to come in town to get it. 

The general understanding — or rather misunder- 
standing — of service is that it should be reckoned as a 
give-away product. The farmer pretty generally has 
this notion, and, having this notion, if he is a fairly 
shrewd sort of person, he is sure to reckon that if the 
dealer can afford to give it away it can't be worth 
very much in any event. 

I met a dealer in Northern Indiana who screwed 
his face up like a dried persimmon when I mentioned 

[ I02 ] 



service to him. There was a smile embedded in the 
wrinkles, but it was a sort of puckered smile at that. 

"Service," he said, **is a joke in most cases. Why.? 
Because it's made so by the chumps who give it 
away. I was one of these chumps for a long time and 
that's why I know. I gave away hundreds of hours of 
my time and skill, just as Andy Carnegie gives away 
libraries. The difference between Carnegie and me 
was that he could afford it and I couldn't. Every 
time a farmer'd telephone to my store that some of his 
implements had gone askew I'd either lock up the 
place or leave it in charge of some fool clerk and then 
drive out to that farm and give away a whole after- 
noon of my time to put something right that the 
farmer himself could have put right with half an effort. 

*'I called this service and talked a lot about it when 
I made my sales. But I'll admit it wasn't a whole lot 
expert service and that when I went to work on most 
of the machines I tackled my hands were all messed 
up with thumbs that didn't belong and my idea of 
mechanics was pretty crude. 

''This came to me all of a sudden one day when a 
manufacturer sent down one of his mechanical experts 
to show me how to set up a new implement. I pulled 
my watch on that fellow and saw^ that he did some- 
thing in about sixteen minutes that would have taken 
me two hours. Then I asked him what he got by the 
hour. 

*'I got out some paper and did a little figuring after 
he left. First, I figured out what my time was worth to 
me as a merchant, and then I figured what my time 
was worth as an amateur mechanic. The conclusion I 

[103I 



reached was that I was a two-way chump. Even the 
inferior service I was giving to farmers was worth 
something, but it wasn't worth so much as my time 
ought to be worth as a merchant. 

*'The question then was how to balance this mess 
up. I puzzled awhile and then hit on it. I decided to 
cram all I could on mechanics till I could give service 
that was worth real money, and then charge for that 
service. I started right in to take things apart and 
put them together again. I visited some of the fac- 
tories and saw how machines were made. I learned 
which were the weak and which were the strong parts, 
and pretty soon I got an education in parts that was 
worth real money to me. 

"I couldn't afford to carry a very heavy stock of 
parts, but I worked out a schedule on the parcel-post 
shipment of parts that has helped me a lot. Some parts 
are too heavy to come through the post, but the great 
majority of parts can. Now, if a customer telephones 
me for a part I send a post card to the branch house or 
district warehouse and down comes that part to the 
farmer by parcel post. I have it sent direct to his 
R. F. D. letter box and that saves the trouble and time 
of shipping it out to him or having him come in for it. 

"And nowadays I charge for my service every dollar 
it is worth. I have a service helper on my staff and I 
charge for his service every dollar it is worth. Was 
there a row about these service charges at first? You 
bet there was. When my customers began telephoning 
to me for first aid to their implements and I replied 
that I'd be glad to come out but it would cost them 
two dollars an hour for my time, I thought some of 'em 

[ 104] 



would bite off the phone connection. They called me a 
pirate and said they'd never buy so much as a half- 
inch bolt in my shop again. Some of them told me that 
if I didn't come out and give them free service they'd 
never pay me a dollar for the stuff I'd sold 'em on 
credit, and that I could come out and get it and sell it 
for junk. 

"It wasn't long before I noticed that the men who 
made the greatest noise about it were the fellows whose 
credit was the most shaky, and this got me going over 
my accounts and planted the firm idea in my head to 
sell nothing from then on unless I got some paper to 
bind the obligation. These fellows could sign chattel 
mortgages for installment furniture, pianos, talking 
machines and what not, and if a dealer only went at it 
right they could give their notes for every purchase of 
farm implements, big or little, they made. 

"It took nerve to swing all these changes, but I 
braced myself for the pull and went at it. I had to 
clean out a lot of junk I was carrying and cut down my 
stock pretty slim, and for a while I had a tight squeeze 
to tide things over. Some manufacturers threatened 
to take my lines away unless I kept up my orders, and 
one or two of them did. I wrote the others that I was 
going to get myself in line for the cash discounts they 
were recommending so loudly in their public speeches 
and that I had got my selling costs figured down to 
dollars and cents and knew a good deal more about my 
business than any of their salesmen could tell me. 

"I also laid in a full line of mail-order catalogues and 
was able to quote the cash prices I was up against for 
almost the identical merchandise they were selling me. 

[105I 



"For a while things looked pretty dubious and I 
wasn't sure that I wouldn't have to hang out the red 
flag. A good bit of my long-time business was slipping 
away and going over to two other dealers. Both those 
fellows called me all kinds of a numskull and my own 
folks began to look at it that way too. 

"And I don't know but I might have gone under if 
it hadn't been that a new line of engines was offered 
to me on a cash-sale basis at a price that was rock- 
bottom and below the mail-order price for the same 
product. 

"I got a few of these engines going and then things 
began to pick up. I chucked the slate out the window 
and didn't make a sale that wasn't practically a cash 
sale. I took short-term notes that were discountable 
at the local bank. I didn't sell a thing that I didn't 
know the ins and outs of from the mechanical stand- 
point, and when I was asked for service I charged for 
it and got the money. 

"I found this important thing out on the service 
end of it after I got the idea cemented down that any 
service I rendered had an actual cash value — nobody 
asked me to come out and fool away my time. My 
customers sent for me only in real emergencies. They 
tried their darnedest to render their own service or 
else they telephoned me and stated their difficulties. 
I narrowed my stock down to plows of one make 
and as few varieties of those as possible, to buggies 
of one make, one type and one price, to a well-known 
standard corn planter, and to the stationary en- 
gine that had proved its quality and worth from the 
jump. ^ 

[ io6 ] ^ 



"The first year I just about made living expenses, 
but last year I did $50,000 worth of business at a ten 
per cent net profit, and I'll come pretty near doubling 
that in another year without expanding my lines to 
any great extent. I plan to take on tractors, but not 
until I can get one that is especially adapted to this 
district, one that is made right and priced right and 
can be sold for spot cash or the equivalent of spot 
cash in short-term paper that can be discounted locally 
in the same way the automobile dealers discount their 
paper." 

It may be contended that this canny Hoosier 
quoted above is not a dealer in the broad sense of the 
term; that he is merely a finicky sort of agent who 
evolved some pig-headed notion and by accident got 
away with it. Very likely it will be urged that he is 
peculiarly favored in being able to do business with 
the ideal sort of customers in an unusually prosperous 
agricultural district. 

I will not attempt to debate these points. The 
interview is offered merely at its face value. Here was 
a man who tackled the experiment of both shortening 
his lines and shortening his credits and selling service. 
He accomplished unobtrusively what he did accom- 
plish. I visited his store and saw his four specialty 
lines on display, each line carefully segregated by itself 
as a separate display unit. 

Two farmers had come in to look at buggies. One of 
those farmers had made up his mind to buy a certain 
mail-order buggy and was on his way to the post office 
to purchase a money order. He had the mail-order 
blank carefully filled out and rolled up with the money. 

[ 107 ] 



On the way to the post office he had met the other 
farmer and they had dropped into a discussion of the 
merits of various buggies. 

Farmer A, with the money order, had been buying 
various equipment by mail and boasted of the savings 
he had made. Farmer B agreed with him so far as 
some of the purchases were concerned, but when it 
came to the question of buggies, he suggested that they 
stop at George Henry's store on the way to the post 
office. He had bought a buggy for cash from George 
Henry and would swear by it. 

So they dropped in, and George Henry was there. 
So were the buggies and so were various parts of the 
buggies that it pays to keep in stock. The buggies 
were in plain sight; so were the parts. George Henry 
— which, by the way, is not this Hoosier's name at 
all — greeted the two men and showed them the bug- 
gies. He had very little to say. He did not volunteer 
any buncombe on the subject of buggies. He was alert, 
waiting for questions. When asked for the price he 
didn't hem and haw and hew and cut and beat round 
the bush concerning terms and conditions. He stated 
the price in dollars and cents in a tone that was posi- 
tive and final. 

"But I can buy the same buggy for ^3.50 less," ob- 
jected Farmer A. 

"I know that as well as you do," said George 
Henry; *'but how about the freight.? The freight on 
the XYZ buggy is ^4.10. How about the time it will 
take you to come to town and get that buggy? It'll 
arrive knocked down. How about the time it'll take you 
to set it up? Isn't your time worth anything to you.?" 

[ 108] 



**0h, I can send Fred, the hired man, in if Fm 
busy." 

*'Sure you can," replied George Henry, "and use 
up a day of Fred's time and a day of a team's time. 
Maybe the labor of your hired man and team isn't 
worth real money.?" 

"Why ain't they worth money.?" snapped back 
Farmer A. "I've got as good teams as any man in 
these parts and Fred's a right smart feller if you only 
keep after him." 

"And this is your busy season too," said George 
Henry. "In that case Fred's time and the team's 
time are worth about twice as much as usual — say 
five dollars. Well, if you want to give five dollars' 
worth of their time and $4.10 in freight it looks to me 
as if you were going to pay a bit high for your XYZ 
buggy. Likewise if you break anything on the XYZ 
it'll take you some time to replace the part." 

George Henry shut up and gave Farmer A time to 
ponder. He knew what was coming. 

"If you'll knock off three dollars on that buggy I'll 
buy it, and here's the cash," broke out Farmer A. He 
produced and flashed the bills. 

George Henry shook his head. 

"Try that on the XYZ people and see if they'll cut 
the price," he said. "I named the cash price for my 
buggy." 

"But if you knock off three dollars there'll still be 
a profit in it for you," pursued Farmer A. 

**Yes," said George Henry, "but you'd have to use 
a magnifying glass to see it. The time I'm taking right 
now in talking to you is worth money to me. I'm 

[ 109] 



paying real money for the rent, light and heat of this 
store. The wages of my help are slicing off dollars as the 
hands of the clock go round. I've put in years invest- 
ing time and labor learning to sell buggies, plows and 
other things — and that's worth money." 

Farmer A pulled off his hat and scratched his head. 
Farmer B grinned and chuckled. *'I guess he's got you 
there, Tom." 

"Reckon he has," admitted Farmer A, who pro- 
ceeded to tear up the mail-order blank and count the 
cash into the hands of George Henry. Half an hour 
later Farmer A was driving out to his place with his 
new buggy. 

Now, this may sound like an incident manufactured 
to bolster up a theory. But it isn't. I was sitting back 
of the little railing round George Henry's office and 
heard every word of the colloquy. I didn't take it 
down in shorthand. There was no need to. It was one 
of those little human incidents that record themselves 
clearly and indelibly if one is interested. And I was. 



[no] 



XV 

The Farmer s Elusive Cash 

A GOOD many dealers I interviewed talk in this 
strain: 
^ "Farmers running round loose with cash in 
their jeans are about as scarce as canaries in Alaska." 
To which we might reply that mail-order houses, auto- 
mobile dealers and the multitude of concerns selling 
merchandise on installments collect from farmers 
every year between ^600,000,000 and ^700,000,000. 
Then there are the insurance companies that collect 
their millions regularly. And there is the banker who 
gets interest on loans and mortgages. 

There really are ways and means of extracting cash 
from the farmer. Not from all farmers, to be sure. 
Unquestionably there will everlastingly be, this side 
of Utopia, a percentage of farmers to whom cash 
money will always remain an unknown symbol, who 
will remain submerged in a quagmire of debt all their 
lives. 

Some bankers and money lenders will always charge 
these unfortunates usurious rates of interest on loans, 
some installment men will fleece them unmercifully, 
and some silver-tongued orators will perpetually hold 
them up as examples of the oppressive and grind- 
the-heel-in-the-face methods of the capitalist classes. 

[Ill] 



But a comparatively small percentage of the past- 
due paper that is still floating round in the implement 
world bears the signatures of the miserably submerged 
type of American farmer. Nor are the losses on this 
past-due paper very great in the aggregate. In the 
case of some big concerns it amounts to less than one 
per cent. The interest on this paper, however, runs 
into many millions more. The uncoUectable bills of 
dealers who carry open accounts pile up more millions, 
and the farmer pays the greater share of this surtax. 
I have had it drummed at me that he willingly pays 
this surtax for the privilege of taking his time at pay- 
ing for things that were sold to him. 

It doesn't always follow that what is sold to farmers 
or any other class of purchasers is always bought by 
them. This may sound like an idiotic quibble; but 
pause a moment and listen to an automobile salesman 
who has abandoned a quick-selling line of buzz-wagons 
for small tractors and has made a killing at it: 

"Tm not selling tractors to farmers. I'm letting 
farmers buy tractors from me — that's why I get cash 
for 'em. You've got to make a man want something 
pretty hard to induce him to buy; you can sell him 
anything if you are in the business of making terms 
that practically amount to a bribe. That's the trouble 
with the farm-implement people. The long-credit 
terms they make are so close to bribery that you've 
got to put on double-lens glasses to see the difference." 

In the same connection there was an installment 
dealer I ran across in the one-crop cotton area of the 
Southwest. He sold house furnishings for a little 
something down and a little something every week. 

[112] 



As I talked to him in his shop I noticed an alleged 
painting in a gilt frame that was prominently dis- 
played on a gilt easel. It was one of those ten-minute 
daubs that are turned out in gross lots by correspond- 
ence-school artists. It pretended to depict a knight in 
armor riding through the forest toward a setting sun. 
You didn't get this impression all at once. My first 
impression, at a little distance, was of a freight car of 
tomato cans which had blown up and caught fire. 
Both the knight and his horse were thoroughly tinned 
and soldered and the forest they traveled through had 
been burned over and tornado swept. 

Harrowitz, the installment man, nodded to it and 
remarked: "Some work of art, eh?" Then he added: 
"It's a little gold mine." 

I didn't quite connect. He asked me what I thought 
it was worth. 

"A dollar thirty-nine for the frame," I ventured. 

"I paid $1.82 for the whole outfit, including easel," 
said Harrowitz. "It wasn't quite new. I sell it for 
two dollars — twenty-five cents down and twenty-five 
cents a week." 

"Where's the profit in that?" I asked. 

Harrowitz rubbed his nose and winked first one eye 
and then the other. 

"Listen," he said. "I've sold that art object two 
hundred times and it's good for fifty more before the 
gilt scales off. It never stayed out beyond five pay- 
ments. Generally the collections don't run higher than 
a dollar. By the time the collector goes round for the 
fourth quarter the purchaser has sort of got cold feet 
on that picture. Most of my customers are simple 

8 [113] 



folk, not exactly fastidious in their tastes, though they 
do do a lot o' plowin' in patent leathers. By the time 
they've paid a dollar on that picture they figure 
they've got all the everlasting good out of it that can 
be got. The neighbors have all seen it and been stupe- 
fied by it. It seems foolish to pay any more money on 
it, so they let the collector collect it. Yes, sir, it's a 
little gold mine." 

Now, notwithstanding all that work of art had gone 
through, and despite its low intrinsic value, when Mr. 
Harrowitz came to sell it for the two hundred and first 
time he took a chattel mortgage on it. No owner could 
possess it for his or her very own until he or she had 
made the eighth payment of twenty-five cents. Nor 
did any ''purchaser" abuse it or neglect it, because of 
the fixed idea that it was not his to abuse. 

How different it is with the long-time-payment 
purchases of farm implements that are left kicking 
round any old place it is convenient to leave them, 
until they are little better than disintegrated scrap 
by the time they are paid for. 



[114] 



XVI 

The New Get-To gether Epoch 

CAN an optimist drive a camel through the eye 
of a needle? He can, with trifling ease. A 
sure-to-Henry optimist can drive a whole 
string of camels through a needle's eye and never turn 
a hair. 

In the course of my roundabout tours of the Middle 
West seeking fresh data on the implement industry 
and its thriving little brother, the tractor industry, I 
met a considerable variety of sure-to-Henry optimists 
who proclaimed that they could do even better than 
drive flocks of camels through the narrow orifice in 
the stub end of a needle — to wit, they could drive 
tractors through in untold numbers and never so much 
as scratch the paint or dent the radiators. 

The needle's eye in this little parable is none other 
than the gateway to cash sales and shorter credits. 
From time immemorial it has been both a close and a 
closed way. The big, many-humped camels in the im- 
plement industry have lumbered up to it, and have 
stopped. They have cocked their eyes at it and have 
looked through it. What they could glimpse on the 
other side was like unto the Eden of their dreams. 

There were to be seen golden streets and shining 
buildings. There were hustling folk with radiant, 

[115 I 



happy countenances going their several ways with 
speed and precision. Everywhere there was order, 
system and calm routine. There were no red banners 
of bankruptcy to stain the halcyon aspect, nor could 
the hoarse braying of the auctioneer be heard above 
the hum of the many harmonized industries. 

Multitudes of prosperous-looking farmers thronged 
the paved ways and the unpaved byways, each one 
bearing a wallet stuffed with cash. There was no jost- 
ling or stampeding in this glad throng. Every man 
knew whither he was bound and the easiest route 
thereto. There were no bands or crossroads sideshows 
to distract attention, no hungry price-cutters reaching 
out for the farmers* coat tails to pull them into their 
spring sales and bargain exhibitions. And lo! there 
were no automobiles! 

Is it any wonder that the camels wept and moaned 
with bitter anguish when they saw all this and yet felt 
the utter futility of attempting to negotiate the eye of 
the needle? As they sat and wept they saw little 
sawed-ofF camels, knock-kneed dromedaries and sorry 
critters resembling goats and gnus rush up to the 
needle's eye and launch themselves blindly at the aper- 
ture, only to fall back bruised and battered and shorn 
of their mangy hair. Finally, when they had wept 
their tear ducts dry, they lumbered to their feet, 
wheeled about and went back to the sour-grass pas- 
tures where the long-credit thistles and the past-due 
papyrus robbed what succulent fodder there was of 
both flavor and nourishment. 

During the latter months of 191 5 and carrying over 
into 1916, far more has been done toward realizing the 

[116] 



dream revealed through the needle's eye than at an}^ 
other period in the history of the implement industry. 
Last fall the leading implement manufacturers ap- 
pointed a committee to discuss the great drive they 
would make toward shorter terms if they could only 
get together on some common understanding. Price 
fixing and monopoly agreements were forbidden to 
them, but if they could obtain from one another de- 
pendable assurances that they would revise their sales 
methods to conform to a general scheme of shorter 
credit terms, a great forward step would be made. 

I talked with the members of this committee after 
they had held several meetings. A few of them, who 
are eminent in the industry, were optimistic. They 
were ready to predict this much — that there would be 
no carry-over of credits from 1916 to 1917 by the 
manufacturers represented on the committee. Assur- 
ances had been given by the Big Five, and the Big 
Five dominated the industry so far as volume of pro- 
duction and sales was concerned. 

Looked at from an economic standpoint, such an 
agreement would be a huge gain to the industry. It 
would be a great gain not only for the big fellows but 
for the little fellows as well. Certain dealers would 
kick and balk and plunge about, but no real opposition 
need be looked for from the efficient dealers. The in- 
efficient dealers would be the chief kickers, and the 
new arrangement would tend to eliminate them from 
the general scheme of things. The efficient dealers 
would gain by the elimination of the inefficient dealers. 
The squeezing-out process would continue under a 
steadily increasing pressure. And with the small gas 

[117I 



tractor coming in as a great big factor in the industry 
the inefficient dealer should be discarded as rapidly as 
possible. 

In the past the inefficient dealer has possessed a 
definite utility for the marketing of small implements. 
Without him, seemingly, it would have been impossible 
to expand into new territory, but when it comes to 
selling tractors and the improved appliances that will 
be sold as tractor accessories, only the efficient dealer 
may serve. At least that's the way it sized up as the 
selling plans were devised. 

The best of selling plans do not always bear the in- 
tended fruit, however. The marketing of any com- 
modity must have its processes of evolution. The same 
may be said in regard to the projected drive in the 
direction of shortening credits. 

Simply because a little group of gentlemen repre- 
senting investments of half a billion dollars got 
together and decided that there were millions of 
profits to be gained by walloping the long-term- 
credits specter out of existence does not mean that 
said specter is ready for his shroud and deep inter- 
ment. There may be a slip-up — indeed, there may be a 
series of slip-ups. 

Not all the members of this very important com- 
mittee may feel the same way about it after they retire 
to the seclusion of their own manufacturing plants. 
When they call in their sales managers, those able and 
canny gentlemen may point out that there are certain 
almost insurmountable obstacles in the way. For in- 
stance some sales manager may rise up on his hind legs 
and remark: 

f 118I 



"It's all mighty fine for the U-9 Plow Company 
to dictate iron-clad terms to its dealers and cut 
out all 1917 carry-overs. The U-9 company has had 
horseshoes hung all over it for the last year and its 
stock is pretty well cleaned down to the bone. None of 
its lines needs very hard pushing. Its inventory is as 
clean as a whistle. 

** WeVe had no such luck. Some of our warehouses 
are chockablock with both our own lines and some of 
our jobbed lines. A lot of that stuff is getting out of 
date, and if we're going to unload it at all we've got to 
let it down on the dealer as easily as possible, both as 
to price and as to terms. It's a cinch the farmers are 
not going to stampede for the stuff. It's got to be sold 
to them, and you and I know how the farmer is accus- 
tomed to buy implements for which he has no pas- 
sionate desire." 

By the time the sales manager has presented the 
case in all its manifold details, the big boss may at 
least partly have emerged from his rosy dream. He 
may soon be in a frame of mind that suggests tempor- 
izing. He may be ingenious enough to devise a way to 
clean out his unsold overstock without resorting to the 
old-time carry-over contracts with the dealer. He may 
have nerve enough to take an apparent considerable 
loss, though only a temporary one, for the sake of in- 
finitely greater gains in the future. He will have to 
thresh all this out with his board of directors and his 
staff of superintendents and managers. 

The head of one big company told me that he hoped 
and prayed that the manufacturers would hang to- 
gether and put their plan through in a big, broad way. 

[119] 



"But," he said, "I am afraid of the Blank & Dash 
Company. They are bigger than we are and they are 
our deadliest rivals. It has long been their policy to 
annihilate competition where it was weak enough to be 
cut down. If they set out to shorten up terms it is 
going to mean a longer lease of life to the little fellows. 
Volume of production is their greatest bulwark and 
they cannot maintain volume if they stiffen up their 
selling terms. They will be compelled to surrender 
certain avenues of distribution to the little fellows. Of 
course, the little fellows who keep tied up to the long- 
credit fallacies are going to strangle themselves in the 
end, but this year there are several agencies that might 
be utilized to hasten the slaughter. 

"The price of raw materials has increased anywhere 
from twenty to sixty per cent. All metal products used 
in the manufacture of farm implements have gone up 
and are still going up, and the manufacturers of these 
products do not extend long credits. The little fellow 
who buys in small quantities will pay proportionately 
more than the big fellow who buys in large quantities. 
A similar condition will apply in the labor market. 

"This will mean an increased demand for cash upon 
the small manufacturer. If he can shorten his terms to 
the dealer appreciably, he will be able to obtain the 
cash to tide him over. If he is forced to do business in 
competition with the big fellow along the old long- 
credit line, he will not get the cash in time to satisfy his 
creditors. 

"Looked at from this angle it would seem to be the 
psychological time for the leaders in the industry to 
turn the elimination screws down to the limit. 

[ 120] 



"But there is still another complexity to face. The 
increased cost of raw materials will compel the manu- 
facturers to raise the price of farm implements. If we 
continue to do business under the old arrangement we 
shall have to boost prices fifteen per cent. If we can 
shorten terms so as to avoid 19 17 carry-overs the in- 
crease need not be beyond ten per cent. Last year was 
a mighty prosperous one for agriculture, and in my 
opinion a raise of ten per cent would not have a disas- 
trous effect in cutting down volume of sales. A raise 
of fifteen per cent would decrease the volume of sales 
to a serious extent. 

"So you see there is a really big urge behind the 
logical policy of shortening credits from the manu- 
facturer's standpoint, and the golden plan would be 
adopted unanimously if we could only trust one an- 
other more than we do. 

"There is still another phase that cannot be left out 
of the reckoning. There are certain of the Big Five or 
Big Six — and some of the smaller twenty-three, for 
that matter — ^who have been expanding their foreign 
business enormously in the past five years. There was 
a big slough-ofF in this business immediately after the 
start of the European war, but by the middle of 1915 
the pendulum swung back. 

"Splendid gains were made in the South American 
trade. Foreign orders for tractors poured in. Here was 
and still is an outlet for volume, and the concerns that 
have skimmed off the cream of this export business 
would be in a position to raise their domestic prices 
fifteen per cent and get away with it on the old long- 
credit basis. 

[121] 



"Naturally it occurs to some of us that those of our 
rivals who are cutting up export melons may fall from 
grace when it comes to the actual fulfillment of prom- 
ises made in get-together meetings. There are doubt- 
ers in our midst, an important group, whose original 
habitat was Missouri. 

*'We recall many winter meetings of the plow as- 
sociation in Chicago when we gave grips all round and 
exchanged golden-rule promises to clean up our selling 
methods and get down to better economic principles in 
expanding our trade. We recall quite vividly how some 
of us who relied upon these promises and agreements 
and hewed to the line of closer selling and shorter 
credits were stung, and how the industry suffered still 
another setback. 

"Those we had relied upon as the shining lights to 
lead the new movement were the first to stab us from 
behind. We had hardly begun to stiffen up our con- 
tract terms with our dealers when down they swooped 
into our choicest territory and attempted to gobble our 
trade on almost any terms the dealer would ask. It 
was traditional cutthroat competition and the only 
way we could meet it was to backslide into our old 
methods." 



[ 122] 



XVII 

How the Bankers May Help 

IT IS palpable that optimism is not likely to be- 
come epidemic in the farm-implement field. The 
pessimist insists upon being heard from, and it is 
never wise to overlook what he has to say. Some pessi- 
mists are simply croakers, but now and then you 
bump into one who is a keen analyst. Yet I doubt if 
there are any of the latter sort who will gainsay today 
that great progress has been made toward bettering 
conditions in the implement industry. I have pretty 
thoroughly scoured the farm-implement field in the 
Middle Western centers that include approximately 
eighty per cent of the industry, and everywhere I 
found the credit situation under discussion. And this 
discussion was not confined to merely academic chan- 
nels of theory. 

The credit problem demanded immediate attention 
and concerted action. The long-credit spectre was 
seen face to face as a devouring incubus. The develop- 
ment of the automobile industry had thrown the spot- 
light upon it. The beginning of the new tractor in- 
dustry was an impelling factor that roused the most 
hidebound reactionaries from their lethargy. The new 
tractor industry will be discussed by itself; it is only 
necessary to point out here that the problems involved 

[ 123 ] 



in the early growth of the tractor industry are closely 
interwoven with the problems of the farm-implement 
industry. 

The implement men were suddenly brought face to 
face with the possibility of losing the tractor, and the 
immense possibilities of profit contained in its de- 
velopment as a necessary factor in farm equipment. 
The antiquated sales methods of the implement in- 
dustry had been tried out in the late lamented big- 
tractor boom and had failed dismally. If the same 
antiquated sales methods were hooked up with the 
new tractor boom they would likewise fail, no matter 
how much better the tractor is today than it was ten 
years ago. 

Mere mechanics without capital or backing had 
jumped into the automobile industry and had taken it 
unto themselves while the captains of the implement 
industry were marking time and thinking about it, and 
some of these mere mechanics gobbled up tens of 
millions of cash from the same farmers whose past-due 
paper was held by the captains of the implement in- 
dustry. 

The implement men might have played a big part 
in the automobile industry if they had had the vision 
and nerve to tackle it on the only sane economic basis 
to conform with twentieth-century conditions. They 
failed to get even the slimmest sort of pickings, for the 
very good reason that they failed to go after them. 
They couldn't see the farmer as a likely purchaser 
of motor cars for at least a generation, and when he 
did begin to buy in vast quantities within a decade 
they were knocked galley-west. Indeed, they were 

I 124] 



astounded two ways: First, to see the farmer come into 
the market at all; second, to observe him unfurl a roll 
of certified currency and hand it over to the automo- 
bile manufacturer. 

The type of country banker has improved amazingly 
in the past two decades and will continue to improve 
much more rapidly, thanks to the new banking laws and 
the organization of the Federal Reserve banks. And for 
still further future expansion we will have the new 
Federal land banks that Congress has at last seen fit 
to grant to the long-suffering farmer. 

Formerly implement purveyors assumed the func- 
tions of bankers for the farmer when the only way a 
farmer could obtain money from a bank was to mort- 
gage all his earthly possessions and his everlasting soul. 
In that earlier epoch our agriculture was passing through 
many throes of pioneering and bonanza enterprising. 
Financing the farmer in many instances was something 
like stacking chips on a roulette table — at least, that's 
about the way it looked to the bankers. The idea that 
every farm was a factory occurred to few if any of the 
banking fraternity. Farm machinery sold to the farmer 
was like any other commodity he purchased, whether on 
time or for cash. They would just as soon lend a farmer 
money to buy a three-story cuckoo clock as they would 
lend him actual cash to buy a reaper or a binder. 

What a vast change has occurred! The country 
banker was persuaded to loan money to the farmer to 
buy automobiles. He is now lending money to the 
farmer for the purchase of tractors — lending this 
money on notes of hand and without the added se- 
curity of chattel or land mortgages. 

[125] 



Early in January, 1916, the Federal Reserve Board 
ruled that a farmer's paper given as security for money 
borrowed to purchase farm machinery could be re- 
discounted at Federal Reserve banks at low interest. 

Shortly after its organization the Federal Reserve 
Board made a ruling in favor of agricultural paper for 
rediscounting, extending the time from ninety days to 
six months. The banker could take a farmer's note 
given to secure an advance for the purchase of live- 
stock, seed, fertilizer, and so on, and rediscount it for 
six months at the Federal Reserve bank, of which it — 
the country bank — was a member. Farm machinery 
was not included in the list of farm equipment covered 
by this rediscount privilege, or you might say farm- 
implement paper was denied the privilege of agri- 
cultural paper. A Cleveland bank asked that the privi- 
lege be extended to cover farm implements and the 
Federal Reserve Board made a ruling complying with 
the request. 

Now the country banker may take the farmer's note 
given to the dealer for the purchase of farm machinery 
and pass it along to the Federal Reserve bank for re- 
discount. And when the note falls due at the expira- 
tion of six months the country banker may accept a 
renewal note and rediscount that. 

The president of one of the great implement con- 
cerns told me that this rediscounting privilege was 
going to give a big lift to the implement manufacturers 
who were determined to shorten up their credits with 
the dealer. It is a real step forward in the direction 
of rural credits, and while it may not solve the 
problems of hundreds of thousands of farmers who 

[126] 



deserve infinitely more financial aid than they are 
able to obtain save at ruinous rates of interest, it will 
certainly pave the way for further progress. 

Altogether, the outlook for shorter credits is far 
from gloomy. The farmer has been getting a liberal 
education in the advantages of buying for cash or on 
his note which may be liquidated as the equivalent 
of cash; dealer efficiency is greatly on the increase, 
thanks to the progressive educational efforts of dealer 
associations and dealer organizations throughout the 
country. 

The dealer standard today is many points higher 
than was the standard ten years ago. Both manufac- 
turers and dealers can continue to raise this standard. 
There is a definite obligation upon the manufacturer 
to abandon his old methods of appointing haphazard 
agents whose entrance into the retail field can mean 
nothing more than the multiplication of inefficiency, 
and there is just as definite an obligation upon the 
dealer to abandon the tinhorn practices of price cut- 
ting, slipshod bookkeeping, and taking on more lines 
than he can ever hope to sell. 

The manufacturer is infinitely more to blame today 
for what the dealer is not than the dealer himself is. 
The reform must begin at the top and work downward. 
The dealer will meet it as nearly halfway as he can 
crawl under the economic burdens he is carrying. 

As for the farmer, he has been too much on the out- 
side. I was about to write "on the outside, looking in," 
but as a matter of fact he has not been looking in; 
rather, he has been on the outside with his back turned. 
He hasn't bothered his head much about it at all. He 

I 127 1 



hasn't asked to have it figured out for him, because of 
his inherent suspicion of figures. He has either re- 
garded himself as the victim of a commercial conspir- 
acy or has refused to think about it at all. He has seen 
dealers come and go in hosts and has come to regard 
the majority of them as crooks or fools. He has seen 
inefficient dealers go down in little armies. 

But what he hasn't seen or heard of has been the 
failure of thousands of manufacturers who were just 
as inefficient, short-sighted or just plain unfortunate 
as the dealers who hung out the red flags. 

The farmer, however, is coming out of his trance and 
is beginning to learn something of the intricacies and 
complexities of great industries. He is becoming more 
and more of a business man himself, both in his pro- 
ducing and in his selling methods. Wherefore he in his 
turn will be able to meet the dealer halfway, after the 
dealer has met the manufacturer halfway, on the basis 
that should ultimately lay the bogy of long credits so 
far underground that nothing short of a cataclysm can 
ever shake him loose again. 



[128] 



Part Two 
The Tractor 



A Mighty Industry in the Making 

THE farm tractor has its second wind. It has 
found itself after years of groping. Back of 
it there is a mighty industry in the making. 
American farms — the farms of the world, for that 
matter — are ready to receive the tractor. The Ameri- 
can farmer is almost too eager to add gas power to the 
mechanical equipment of the farm. Improvement and 
cheapening of the product have put it within his 
economic reach. In many cases he is going to strain 
his reach to get it, just as he has been straining his 
reach for other mechanical equipment that his farm- 
management plans had not made room for. 

The small, low-priced tractor possesses the attrac- 
tiveness of a bauble to multitudes of farmers, and a 
great many farmers are going to buy gaudy play- 
things, and not power machines, unless they skin their 
eyes and approach the counters of the tractor pur- 
veyors with exceeding wariness. 

We might as well start off this series with a warning 
and hang up a few Safety First and Watch Your 
Step signboards. If the farmer will follow me he may 
save himself much hard-earned increment. Not that 
there is any immediate need for muck-raking or de- 
structive criticism, but the small tractor, and the little 

[131] 



bit larger than small tractor, and the still larger than 
the little bit larger than small tractor, are coming out 
of the shops so fast and in so many shapes and pat- 
terns that the ordinary looker-on is more than likely 
to become giddy watching them. 

The manufacturer of the tried and proved product 
deserves the benefit of all that can be said in his favor. 
He has a variety of brand-new special problems on his 
hands that the buying public on the farms should con- 
sider with him to their own advantage. 

Many of these problems splice in with the problems 
of the farm-implement industry. Some phases of the 
gas-tractor industry may revolutionize the implement 
industry; other phases may strip a gear or two in the 
machinery of the farm-implement business. 

But before we come to these problems in their 
separate aspects, let us rivet our attention upon the 
fact that the gasoline tractor is coming with such speed 
that there are bubbles in its wake. Not harmless soap- 
suds bubbles, but bubbles that are likely to cause grief 
and anguish to those who mistake them for what they 
pretend to be but are not — bubbles that will burst and 
rend the bankroll and destroy the fabric thereof. 

Was it not so in the rampant beginnings of the auto- 
mobile industry? In the initial development of the 
horseless vehicle it was commonly called the automo- 
bubble. 

No wonder, when soap-makers and tinsmiths went 
into the game on the theory that anything that 
bore the flimsiest resemblance to an automobile 
could be sold to the unsuspecting public. But no 
more do you hear of the automobubble — the in- 

[ 132] 



dustry has stabilized itself, and has left its long wake 
of bursting bubbles far behind. 

In the tractor game there will be a repetition of what 
happened in the automobile industry. Possibly not to 
the same magnificent extent, but to a very consider- 
able extent, the stable manufacturers and the easy- 
going-take-the-other-fellow's-word-for-it buying pub- 
lic are going to suffer from the contrivance and disin- 
tegration of gas-tractor bubbles. 

The stable manufacturers will merely compete with 
the bubble products. The farmer will buy the bubbles 
and will be everlastingly stung. Having been stung, he 
will of course vent his wrath upon tractors in general. 
He will denounce any and all tractors as delusions and 
snares. The makers of good tractors will suffer in- 
directly from this. If the victims of bubble products 
could make a loud enough noise to be heard far and 
wide in the great tractor market, the makers of honest 
products would be compelled to shoulder a crushing 
burden. 

But the bubble victims can only twitter. Their 
plaints and lamentations will be confined to narrow 
localities. And the little groups of neighbors who hear 
the tales of woe will forget them overnight. When 
Bill Opdyke tells Lew Budd how he, Bill, bought a 
tractor that couldn't pull a one-bottom plow through 
a custard pie. Lew Budd will publicly sympathize with 
Bill and agree with him that the man who sold him 
that tractor ought to be grilled over a slow fire till he 
perished in excruciating agony. But when Lew Budd 
sits down to think it over he'll gradually figure out 
that Bill Opdyke is a natural-born chump anyhow and 

[ 133 1 



deserved to be stung. Says Lew to himself: "If poor 
Bill only had my gumption and common sense he'd 
never been stung. Then maybe half the trouble with 
that tractor is the way Bill runs it. Now, in my case 
Vd buy a good tractor to start with and Vd run it with 
better than average intelligence." 

And the upshot is that Bill Stung Opdyke's holler 
doesn't make a dent anywhere. The bubble rogues 
keep right on selling flimsy up to the point where the 
makers of honest products are able to advertise them 
out of existence. 

So, Mister Farmer-on-the-Trail-of-a-Tractor, beware 
the bubbles! Lots of them are shiny and iridescent and 
comely to look at, but there is no substance back of 
them at the manufacturing end. Their parents are 
very likely to deny them; there are no service aids 
attached to them, for primarily they are made merely 
to sell — not with the special object of standing up and 
doing the work. 

To sail into this tractor game with a discussion of 
bubbles may seem like beginning at the wrong end 
with destructive commentaries. Let me explain: I 
have two objects in view. First, I desire to draw the 
attention of the farmer at the very beginning to the 
fact that he should choose the tractor to meet his needs 
with the utmost discretion; second, I wish to begin 
with the earliest beginnings of the tractor industry and 
follow it step by step through a period of gigantic 
bubbles and rainbow booms until the industry emerged 
and found itself and got going on a sane basis of engi- 
neering efficiency and cash sales. 

In my introductory chapter discussing the trend of 

[134] 



the farm -implement industry I made bare mention 
of the fact that the big-tractor boom had collapsed. 
Now I am going to set down in some detail why it 
collapsed. I have gone over the situation carefully 
with a dozen or more men who were concerned in the 
boom. They agreed to a man that they started wrong. 
They built the wrong thing and they sold it in the 
wrong way. Their vision of the market for their hurry- 
up product was warped and twisted. As they look 
back upon what they did, they admit that they were a 
giddy lot of theorists; also, a good many of them were 
plungers of the sort who leap into deep waters before 
they learn to swim. 

The Northwest had been opened up and the big 
wheat gamble was in full swing. Prairie breaking in 
the Middle West had begun with man power plus 
horse power. There had been a big wheat gamble in 
the central prairies and a multitude grew rich at it. 
But when the Northwest was pioneered there were 
climatic differences, also geographical and physio- 
graphical differences. Pioneering had been the stiffest 
sort of game in the Middle West, but in the Northwest 
Nature raised the ante still higher. It was a bleaker 
wilderness, with greater transportation difficulties, 
and it was infinitely less attractive to labor. 

The primary problem in the Northwest, then, was to 
obtain man labor, the secondary problem was to get 
horse labor. The farmers could get the horses to pull 
the plows, but they couldn't get the men to drive the 
horses. It was altogether a big-plowing problem. 

First, they tried out the steam tractor, which had 
been developed with the development of the threshing 

[135I 



machine. The steam tractor was never intended for 
plowing. It devoured fuel like a blast furnace and 
possessed an unquenchable thirst. It was all to the 
merry if you anchored it alongside of a well and a 
trainload of fuel, but when you tooled it out into the 
unwatered wastes you had to organize a reserve army 
to keep it fed up. 

The gas engine was a growing infant in those days, 
and the idea occurred to a small host of inventors to 
force its growth to fit the urgent needs of the North- 
west. To do this it was necessary to jump it from in- 
fancy into robust manhood — you might say gianthood. 
The inventors began to design ten and twelve plow gas 
tractors. It was almost as if Robert Fulton had 
started out with a Mauretania. 



[136I 



II 

The Big Tractor Boom Collapse, and Why 

A MANUFACTURER who built many of the levi- 
athan type of tractors to order gave me this 
^ interesting account of the early days of the 
big gas tractor: 

"Designers and promoters and all sorts of people 
flooded us with orders to build tractors for them. 
They wanted big ones— the biggest possible. The 
bigger they were the more money they could get for 
them, and it was just as hard and just as costly to sell 
a fairly big one as to sell a monster. We followed their 
designs as best we could and turned them over. 

"The engines had power, provided you got them to 
go — that is, started them. Starting devices for gas 
engines in those days were mighty crude, and the 
bigger the engine the tougher the job to start them. 
For most of these big tractors it was a job for the shop 
mechanic to start them. In many cases it took an 
entire staff of shop mechanics to start them. Occa- 
sionally big tractors were sold and shipped out to 
farmers when the manufacturer's machinists couldn't 
start them. 

"The weight of those early big tractors ranged from 
26,000 to 50,000 pounds. Think of that load for a 
crude, raw, undeveloped, half-baked engine to pull, 

[ 137] 



plus a gang of ten to fourteen plows! Yet sales ran into 
the thousands, until the Dakotas and the Western 
Canadian provinces were stocked up with fleets and 
squadrons of them. 

**They were sold to effect great economies of man 
labor, but it soon developed that it required the ser- 
vices of an entire community to start one. Hundreds 
of farmers kept them going all night so as to be sure 
they would start in the morning. Boys were assigned 
to keep them supplied with fuel and to see that they 
didn't stop during the night. When they stopped they 
often stopped for days or weeks. Occasionally they 
stopped like grandfather's clock — never to go again. 

"Parts broke, parts wore out and parts crystallized. 
The manufacturers had not provided against this wear 
and tear by making enough duplicate parts. New 
castings had to be made to order and this ran repair 
bills for the farmers up to the sky. Repair bills on a 
single tractor would range from $500 to ^1500 in a 
season. 

"Farmers went broke, manufacturers went broke 
and distributors went broke. The farmers were paying 
two, three and four times the cost to manufacture 
these tractors. A farmer agent would collect a $1200 
commission on a $4000 tractor, provided the tractor 
was ever paid for. Then there were the manufac- 
turer's and the distributor's profits to deduct. 

"The big tractors were usually sold for twenty-five 
per cent cash down and the remainder in two or three 
fall payments. The purchase price had to be set as 
high as the traffic would bear to carry the great risks. 
The whole scheme of things was bad. The tractor was 

[138I 



sold on a bad economic basis before it had arrived 
within hailing distance of mechanical efficiency. 

"Yet the drive was kept up at high pressure during 
several good crop years. Prosperity kept the bubble 
puffed up and dripping rainbows. When the bad crop 
years came along the bubble burst. It became common 
talk in the Northwest that every farmer who had 
plunged on a tractor had gone broke. 

** Bankers refused to give credit to farmers who 
owned tractors; merchants followed suit. The scare 
carried even further. Jobbers and wholesalers were 
instructed to give no credit to merchants who gave 
credit to farmers who owned tractors. 

"It looked for some few years as if the big gas 
tractor had received a wallop it could never recover 
from. Northwest distributing centers began to ac- 
quire tractor graveyards. I have seen as many as 500 
of these leviathan tractors parked in one of these 
graveyards." 

During this dismal period, however, the traction 
engine was beginning to find itself. The stationary 
gas engine had found itself and the automobile had 
run away from all competitors in the field of mechani- 
cal invention and manufacturing and selling efficiency. 

Also agriculture had undergone great changes. The 
big wheat gamble had slowed up and land values were 
skyrocketing. Great ranches were being divided and 
subdivided. The market for the mammoth tractor 
grew narrower while you watched, but at the same time 
the market for the small tractor opened up clear across 
the continent — split wide open, you might say, and 
invited the tractor makers to come in with a rush. 

[ 139] 



In lining up for the purposes of comparison the big- 
tractor boom and its bubble days with the small- 
tractor boom and its bubble days I do not wish the 
impression to gain that the big tractor is a failure 
simply because it started wrong. 

The big tractor has evolved through many refining 
processes and has become an increasingly important 
factor in the development of both agriculture and 
commerce. It performs definite functions that the 
small tractor is not likely ever to assume. In big farm- 
ing operations, where there are large tracts of land to 
break, in road work and big traction enterprises it has 
made as secure a place for itself as has the motor truck 
in the range of usefulness of the motor vehicle. It has 
become an engine of war of essential and primary use- 
fulness. 

Nevertheless, the prospect is that the big gas tractor 
will soon be regarded as merely a valuable by-product 
of the tractor industry. Tractor manufacturers who 
have been making a few score big tractors a year to 
meet a steady, dependable demand are planning to 
manufacture small tractors by the thousand. 

A considerable group of tractor makers have rushed 
into this small-tractor market blindly, just as the 
majority of tractor makers rushed into the big-tractor 
market blindly. The Bubble Brotherhood rushed up 
to the starting barrier at the first sound of the bell, 
panting with enthusiasm and ready to take all the 
hurdles and ditches with their eyes closed. A good 
many of them are up to their neck in the ditches now, 
but some of them are still running in long, loose leaps 
and with their eyes still closed. 

[ 140] 



As a matter of canny fact, however, the Bubble 
Brotherhood cannot get very far in the tractor game — 
not nearly so far as they got in the automobile game. 
The automobile had an easy time of it making good 
on an efficiency basis compared with the task that con- 
fronts the small tractor. 

The automobile could make good by putting on its 
Sunday clothes and strolling up the avenue. So long 
as it looked good, kept going and got there, not a great 
deal more was required of it. But the tractor has to 
get itself into overalls, roll up its sleeves, go to work 
and earn its way. It must perform hard labor. 

A few farmers may buy the Lovely Lily tractor be- 
cause of its gorgeous paint and the sweet symphonies 
of its carburetor, but the vast majority of farmers are 
going to buy the Gitupangit tractor because it de- 
velops the required horse power to pull a definite 
number of plows through a soil type of many varia- 
tions of texture without panting or getting the heaves. 
And the great farming brotherhood will not be slow to 
learn that the Gitupangit tractor that should strike 
their fancy most is the critter with five or six horse 
power to spare over and above the definite amount 
of horse power required to go through with a pretty 
demonstration. 

The automobile and gas engine have taught several 
million farmers at least an elementary lesson in power 
mechanics. This may prove an important factor in 
impeding the sale of the Lovely Lily or the Rainbow 
Gem. But there are still greater barriers in the way to 
prevent the Bubble Brotherhood from getting very far 
— selling costs and selling organization. Yet another 

[141] 



mighty impediment in their way might be la- 
beled Production Economies. Only volume of pro- 
duction will permit the sale of efficient tractors at a 
low or popular price. 

Scouting round through the Middle West and in the 
Minnesota and Wisconsin territory, where the tractor 
industry centers, I gathered much illuminating ma- 
terial concerning the bubble tractor. I did this scout- 
ing in the beginning weeks of the current year, 1916, 
which promises to be a golden year for the tractor in- 
dustry. I visited a dozen plants where bubble tractors 
are being made or have been made, or where tractor 
parts are being made and sold to members of the 
Bubble Brotherhood. 

In many cases only a few demonstration machines 
are being turned out. These are built solely for dem- 
onstration purposes, not for sale. The gentlemen who 
designed them and had them made are merely wildcat 
promoters. Their purpose is to sell stock, not tractors. 
They will endeavor to sell stock to farmers — not that 
they will turn down the widows and orphans of the 
cities, school-teachers, lone spinsters, or other humble 
folk who are likely to be gulled by get-rich-quick lures. 

More than a hundred concerns have come into the 
small-tractor arena within the past two years and have 
taken out patents on tractors. One big manufacturer 
showed me a list of 152 concerns that announce their 
willingness to sell tractors. The Department of Agri- 
culture at Washington has compiled a list of 178 dif- 
ferent designs of farm power tractors that were either 
on the market or hoped to get on the market before 
the spring of 1916. These lists had been brought up 

[ 142 ] 



to date so far as it was possible to obtain the informa- 
tion up to May I, 1916. 

Some big automobile manufacturers are coming into 
the game, but not with a rush nor with untried prod- 
ucts. The engineers they assigned to the job of 
scouting have recommended caution — extreme cau- 
tion. They have also recommended that all the benefit 
possible be obtained from the mistakes of others. 
They advise delay until all tractor designs become 
more nearly standardized, and when a great volume of 
production may be marketed by means of modern ad- 
vertising and selling methods. 

Few automobile manufacturers have any expecta- 
tion of invading the tractor field and shouldering the 
specialists to one side at one jump. They see that the 
big farm-implement manufacturers have great advan- 
tages over any other special class of competitors, pro- 
vided they wake up and adopt modern business 
methods in both manufacturing and merchandising. 
They see also that the implement men have ready- 
made sales organizations that should have every pos- 
sible advantage in selling tractors to farmers. 

But will the implement men modernize their meth- 
ods as they come to sell tractors in a big way.? There 
are a few encouraging signs, but almost as many dis- 
couraging symptoms. 

During the past six months they have proclaimed 
their intention to shorten credits and approach more 
and more nearly to a cash basis of doing business. 
Eminently a favorable sign. 

Since the beginning of the year I have talked to 
the heads of concerns that have hundreds of millions 

I 143] 



invested in the implement industry. Some of them have 
been making tractors for years. Others have taken on 
tractors within the past few months. Still others are 
planning to take on tractors. They declared unani- 
mously that they would sell these tractors for cash — 
sell them for cash through the same dealers who have 
been disposing of their tillage and harvesting machin- 
ery on long time. The majority of them declared they 
would shorten up terms on all lines at the same time 
they sold their tractors for cash. 

It should be manifest that there are cumulative 
forces to urge the implement men to abolish so far as 
possible long credits. The great and almost over- 
whelming demand for small tractors — a cash demand, 
mind you — is blazing the way as nothing else could. 



144 



Ill 

A Modern Miracle in Selling for Cash 

HAS the farmer been asked whether it is his 
anxious wish to pay cash for tractors? He has 
not. 

Will he be asked this pertinent question? He will 
not. 

Will he be asked if he can afford a tractor? This is 
an impertinent question. Better not rile him. 

Will the farmer be asked if he has the cash ? Again, 
no. 

Will he be asked if he can dig up the cash? Better 
not ask him that either. The farmer is sensitive. Take 
it for granted that somewhere in his strong box he has 
a credit wand that will summon the cash out of the 
atmosphere. Then stand pat. 

The ideal situation for marketing tractors is con- 
tained in the following little colloquy: 

Farmer: I want a tractor. 

Dealer: Good, the Slippery Comet 6-14 is just 
your meat. Fork over the cash. 

Farmer: Roll the Comet up to the bank. Fll meet 
you there with the shining coin. 

Sounds almost like the way things happen in fairy 
stories or in the Rollo books. It may shock some im- 
plement manufacturers and dealers to learn that it has 
^° [ 14s ] 



actually happened within the past year in the new- 
bloom development of the tractor industry. It is to be 
hoped that this will be a pleasant shock, an agreeable 
surprise. Not that the same thing is bound to happen 
to them. It is too early to predict universal cash sales 
for the tractor. Certain implement manufacturers 
have a dizzy lot of readjusting to do before they can 
even trail in the get-the-cash-for-the-tractor scramble 
that has begun. 

The story I am going to tell does not involve an im- 
plement manufacturer, nor yet an old-line tractor 
manufacturer. It is a concern that sprang up suddenly 
while nobody was looking. It grew into being for the 
one and only purpose of selling tractors. It had good, 
strong backing, but not reservoirs of funds. 

Its organizers had been in and out of various tractor 
concerns that had gone over the bumps during the 
unhealthy big-tractor boom. No, there were no lambs 
in this little flock. They were men who had made mis- 
takes wholesale in making and selling other tractors. 
They had sold too great a tonnage of metal for too 
great a tonnage of purchase price and they had failed 
to get the cash. So when they got together in the 
tractor metropolis of Minneapolis they decided greatly 
to reduce the tonnage of metal, also to shave down the 
tonnage of cash, but above all things to get the cash. 

Let us call this little enterprise the Cold Dough 
Tractor Company. Of all the tractor concerns I have 
looked into, the Cold Dough people have had the most 
thrilling career; furthermore, they have sold their 
product only for cash and are still selling it for cash 
only. Not that they have had straight sailing and 

[146] 



smooth rolling from the start. They will tell you very 
frankly today that they began operations with the 
right selling idea but the wrong tractor. 

Their first model, the Little Dough, was not a suc- 
cess. The price was attractive enough — less than ^400 
— but the tractor itself lacked pep. It was sold as a 
two-plow tractor, and under favorable soil conditions 
and in the hands of a skilled operator it could pull two 
plows, and after the plowing it could pull harrows and 
drills and seeders and rollers. 

But what it greatly lacked was reserve power. When 
the plows cut into stiff sod or gummy gumbo, or 
struck obstructing stones and impeding trash, and so 
on, the motor would utter a plaintive sob and lay 
down on the job. 

No, it must be admitted for the sake of truth 
that the Little Dough had not had the thorough 
and careful testing out that any tractor intended 
for all-round farm service should have. It was too 
much of a rush product, and many hundreds of pur- 
chasers were entirely justified in yowling that they'd 
been stung. 

Although the Little Dough was shy a good many 
things that even a pony-sized tractor should be long 
on, the company managed to market 3800 of them for 
cash and survive the stigma of having started wrong. 
The Little Dough was launched into the 1914 tractor 
market. It began its career of distribution for cash in 
April of that year, and continued to sell for cash even 
after the war had started to muss up the financial cen- 
ters of the globe and bring on a period of panicky re- 
trenchment in America. 

[147I 



Looking back over the situation it seems almost a 
miracle that the Cold Dough tractor makers did not 
founder. What saved them was their selling policy 
and their alertness in recognizing that the Little Dough 
did not fill the bill. They will not admit that it was a 
total failure, and persist in arguing that it was a good 
buy for the money. To my way of thinking this is a 
specious argument. Nothing is a good buy for the 
money that fails to render the service for which it was 
purchased. 

The makers of the Little Dough contend that there 
was nothing faulty in the design, but that there was 
not enough weight, stability and power in it for all- 
round rough-and-ready service. So what they really 
did was to enlarge the Little Dough into the Big 
Dough. This meant an increased cost of manufacture 
of about thirty-five per cent and, naturally, necessi- 
tated a raise in the retail price. The price was jumped 
from less than ^400 for the Little Dough to almost $600 
for the 191 5 Big Dough. The 1916 price for the Big 
Dough was jacked up about ten per cent above the 
1915 price. 

There were enough Little Doughs scattered round 
in twenty or thirty states to give the company a black 
eye. Here was a difficult situation to face. Competi- 
tors stood on the side lines and grinned. It had been 
widely predicted that the Cold Dough Tractor Com- 
pany would shrivel up and blow away. How could it 
survive the ignominy of having produced and mar- 
keted a lemon .^ 

Well, the makers went about it in this way: They 
announced in a loud, resounding voice the creation of 

[148] 



the Big Dough. They advertised the Big Dough as It. 
They didn't refer back to the Little Dough as a failure, 
save by the gentle implication that it was about the 
best that could have been expected for the money. 
But their agents and distributors went among pur- 
chasers of the Little Dough and offered them a bargain 
exchange by allowing one hundred per cent on the 
purchase price of the Little Dough. 

Not all of the Little Doughs were traded back in 
this way. I was informed in Minneapolis last January 
that a good many of the Little Doughs are still on the 
job in favored sections, performing with high effi- 
ciency. Then, of course, there were a good many farm- 
ers who bought them, got sore at them and remained 
everlastingly sore. Nothing would persuade those 
chaps to trade, no matter how favorable the terms. 

But the important fact is that the Little Dough and 
its shortcomings were lived down in a surprisingly 
short space of time and the Big Dough came on the 
market and made a killing. It did really more than 
make a killing — it set a pace for cash sales that made 
the heads of certain old-line implement manufacturers 
buzz like pinwheels. 



I 149 1 



IV 

How the Miracle Was Brought About ^m 

WHEN I got out to Kansas City in the autumn 
of 1915 I began asking questions about 
how the small tractor was going in the 
Southwest. The Big Dough, bear in mind, is a small 
tractor, sold to pull two fourteen-inch plows through 
almost anything. It weighs round 5000 pounds. I was 
informed presently that the light-weight tractor was 
in the way of being a screaming success in the South- 
west. The representative of a concern that doesn't 
make anything in the nature of the pony-sized tractor 
said to me: 

"And these little fellows are selling for cash too. 
There's a firm here in Kansas City of three young men 
who have switched over from the automobile business 
and have taken on the Big Dough tractor. They are 
selling scads of them and getting the farmers' cash 
every time. They are the distributors for this territory 
and they are selling through sub-dealers. It could not 
be done, but they are doing it. You'd better drop in 
on them and hear what they have to say." 

I dropped in on them and got their story. There are 
three young men in the firm, two of them brothers, 
and one of the brothers red-headed and locally famous 
as an automobile salesman. Yes, they had swung over 

[150] 



into the tractor game the year before, seUing the Little 
Dough. They had sold 500 Little Doughs — all for 
cash — in their territory in 1914. But, shucks, that 
was just a nibble. They had sold approximately 1000 
Big Doughs in the same territory since the spring of 
191 5. It was early in October when I got these inter- 
esting details. 

He seemed a mighty brisk and alert young man, he 
who did the talking. He looked after the financial 
arrangements. The firm's books were at his elbow. 
He opened one and thumbed the page. 

"Total business up to October first," he said, "^490,- 
000 for the season — and we got cash. Every time. 
We do not think a whole lot of the record at that, for 
we could almost have doubled the business if the fac- 
tory could have speeded up the output. 

We followed the same sales method we had been 
accustomed to follow in the sale of automobiles. 
We shipped our tractors with bill of lading and 
draft attached. No credit to anyone, farmer or 
dealer. We paid no attention to orders that were 
not accompanied by at least ten per cent of the pur- 
chase price. 

"Just a minute while I answer the phone." 

His end of the telephone conversation was this: 
"Who's that.? . . . The X & Y Plow Company? 

. . . Yes, yes, we have done business with that 
dealer. . . . What's his credit rating.? Blest if I 
know or give a rap. We don't use any rating book in 
this establishment. We sell only for cash. Sorry we 
can't help you out, old pal. Good-by." 

As he turned away from the phone he beamed. 

[151I 



"That poor implement cuss," he chuckled, "is 
worrying his head off about the credit rating of some 
little dealer down in Pawnee County, Kansas. They 
are probably trying to load him up with more stuff 
than he knows how to sell, but want to look up his 
past history and previous condition of servitude before 
they take the leap. 

"Now, we sell that chap only what he is so anxious 
to get and make a commission on that he'll hustle his 
pins off to get the cash to take up the bill of lading. 
We've sold tractors through at least a hundred of 
these little dealers without acquiring a gray hair. We 
have made a rather surprising discovery too — that a 
lot of the shaky ones, or so-called drone dealers, will 
exert themselves about three times as strenuously to 
make a cash sale as they have been accustomed to do 
in their long-term-credit business. 

"There was the case of a dealer down in Amarillo, 
Texas, who sold twenty-three tractors on time last 
year. Of course he had to get 'em on time to sell 'em 
on time. Well, there was only one of his twenty-three 
customers who met his payments. The dealer wrote 
to us and told us what a brilliant performer he was in 
selling tractors. Wouldn't we send him a sample on 
time? 

"We replied that we didn't deal in samples and that 
we had an automatic system of opening and closing 
our accounts simultaneously. If he felt quite confident 
he could sell one of our tractors we should be glad to 
let him have it at the trade price. All we should re- 
quire from him was an advance payment with his 
order to cover all freight risks; then the tractor would 

[152] 



come down to him with the bill of lading and draft 
attached. 

''Yes, he bought a tractor our way, and he sold it 
too — for cash. Then he bought some more the same 
w2Ly and sold them ditto — all for cash. The first thing 
you know that fellow will offer cash to a plow man and 
thereby cause a demise in the plow industry.'* 

While his father, an old-time implement man, sat 
by and looked on with an expression of ecstatic ap- 
preciation, as of a fond parent listening to the miracu- 
lous achievements of a beloved offspring, Mr. H., Jr., 
recounted his selling efforts and their results without 
any attempt to brag. I wouldn't say that he was 
shrinkingly modest, but the impression I got was that 
he was more gleeful than boastful over the result he, 
his brother and their partner had obtained. 

As if to soft-pedal any notion I might obtain that he 
was bragging he explained: "We simply followed the 
selling policies that were built into the automobile 
industry and proved they would apply to the new small 
tractor. 

"One of the little stunts we did that made a hit was 
to bring in a trainload of Big Dough tractors and an- 
nounce the fact with sufficient volume of voice to at- 
tract attention. It was the first big trainload of trac- 
tors that had ever been assembled at a tractor plant 
and shipped out in one screaming unit. 

"There were forty-three cars in the train, and there 
were five or six tractors to a car. It was a $150,000 
trainload, and the cars were plastered with posters so 
that none of the rural inhabitants in Minnesota, Wis- 
consin, Iowa and Missouri, who saw it going by, would 

[153] 



have any doubt as to contents. And when it came 
tooting into Kansas City quite a few folks turned out 
and rubbered. 

"I only wish now that it had been two trainloads, 
for we sold that one so fast that it cleaned us out in no 
time and left a big gap before we could hope for an- , 
other shipment. Our allotment of looo tractors in ■ 
three months was a big one, but the demand was such 
that we could have doubled the record if the manu- 
facturers could have kept up the output. 

** Every condition for sale was favorable in the 
Southwest. The price of gasoline was 'way down; 
wheat was selling at war prices; French and British 
purchasing agents were scouting the plains for horse- 
flesh. All a farmer had to do was to sell two or three 
farm chunks and buy one of our tractors. He could 
wait to cash in his crops later. 

''There was a rip-roaring demand for light tractors, 
but don't imagine for a minute that we simply put the 
stuff on the counters, labeled it and priced it, and 
waited for the farmers to come up and buy. Nor did 
we leave it to the dealer — automobile, implement or 
otherwise. Our salesmen went out and everlastingly 
hustled for business, among them my brother Nick. 

''Nick is six feet tall, wide in the shoulder, deep in 
the chest, freckled and red-headed." 

"And the best natural-born salesman in the South- 
west," interjected Mr. H., Sr., and then lapsed again 
into beaming silence. 

"Yes, Nick is a crackajack salesman," pursued 
Nick's brother. "He was the best automobile sales- 
man in Kansas City, which puts him up pretty high. 

I154] 



"Now, a lot of the people who try to sell things to 
farmers suffer from the delusion that the way to go out 
in the country and make a hit is to stop shaving and 
dress like a recruit in Coxey's army. As I heard one 
solemn ass propound it: ' Don't go near a farmer look- 
ing like a city dude, or he will immediately suspicion 
you of selling gold bricks.' 

"Rot, net. A real front makes as big a hit with the 
farmer as with any other human. We proved that when 
we began selling automobiles to farmers. If you are 
going to peddle tinware from a cart it may not pay you 
to put on much of a front, but if you are going to sell 
anything that runs into real money, why, look the part. 

" Before Nick went out to sell tractors he had several 
seventy-five-dollar suits of clothes built. They weren't 
somber blacks and blues or old-fogy pepper-and-salts. 
They were clothes that announced themselves quite a 
piece up the alley. You could see 'em comin' and, as 
the old saying goes, you could hear 'em a long way off. 
They were plaids and stripes, but of the finest material 
and workmanship, silk-lined and with a monogram on 
the inside pocket of each coat. 

"There was real garnish to Nick's clothes, but he 
didn't make the mistake of adding to the outfit a boiled 
shirt and top hat. No, he wore a hickory shirt, a crim- 
son tie and a big, white Texas hat. He wore big, sub- 
stantial shoes. Also, he carried a thumping big cane. 
He looked husky, hardy, unusual and prosperous. 

"When Nick went into the field to interrupt a 
farmer in his plowing and shook that farmer's hand and 
slapped him on the back, that farmer was interested. 
Nick's red hair, his smile and his gift of conversation 

[155] 



did the rest. Wherever he got out in the open he 
drew a crowd, and I never heard tell of any farmer 
referring to him as a dude. 

There was one old fellow in the Texas Panhandle 
who bought two tractors from Nick, then got the 
name and address of his tailor and ordered a suit twin 
to Nick's. 

" During the selling season we had five experts on the 
road all the time, and we saw to it that they wore 
good clothes, stopped at the best hotels and made a 
front. These were just tractor experts, and they went 
from agent to agent and from dealer to dealer, giving 
demonstrations and instructions in their districts." 

"Whenever we got a kick from a purchaser any- 
where we telegraphed to the expert nearest him and 
had him hustle out to that farmer to render first aid. 
In addition to these tractor experts we employed a 
little staff of plow-hitch experts. They did nothing but 
go round and show farmers how to get the best results 
with their plowing outfits." 

"Did you recommend any special line of plows.?" 
I asked. 

"Yes, and went even farther than that. We sold 
engine plows for cash to tractor buyers, and sold a raft 
of them. That makes a mighty interesting little side- 
issue by itself. 

"We went to a big plow concern and told them that 
we would like to take on a two-bottom gang especially 
adapted to our tractor. We would buy them on a cash 
basis arid would sell them for cash. In this way we 
could sell them to the farmer for about ten dollars less 
than he could buy them on time. 

[156] 



"*But the farmers won't pay cash for them,' said the 
manager of this plow concern. We thought they would. 
We offered to make a try at it with fifty gangs. No, 
they wouldn't put out any special gang for us in such 
a little order. If we wanted to plunge into cash sales 
of gang plows we'd have to make a real plunge. They'd 
make us a minimum of 200. They would build us any 
number above 200 we could dispose of during the sea- 
son. The plow man smiled when he said this, then 
added: 

*'*You fellows will be bucking about a dozen big 
plow concerns in the same territory — concerns that are 
selling on easy terms. Better consider what you're up 
against before you wade into the mire.' 

"Well, we talked it over and decided to wade. We 
took a chance on 200 two-bottom gangs. The plow 
people sort of smiled up their sleeves when they took 
the order. They were confident we'd have at least 125 
gangs left on our hands. 

"What happened .? The impossible. We sold the 200 
gangs as fast as the manufacturer could fill the order. 
Every one of them for cash, of course. Then we re- 
ordered. Up to date we have sold a few more than 700 
of those engine gangs. We sold a goodly number of 
them in the territory where the maker of the plow was 
pushing his own sales on time. We sold for cash right 
under the noses of dealers who were putting them out 
on time. Farmers who had ordered these engine plows 
from dealers on time canceled their orders and bought 
from us for cash. 

"Oh, no, cash discounts don't appeal to farmers! 
We'd had that dinned into our ears all the time we 

[157] 



^ 



were selling automobiles. But we sold automobiles for 
cash to farmers, then we sold tractors to them for cash, 
and when we made the price right and gave them what 
they wanted to buy — not merely what we wanted to 
sell — they bought their plows for cash." 

*'Not once did we take in any paper equivalent for 
money; cash only. We haven't carried a cent of paper 
since we started selling tractors. We have been selling 
cylinder oil by the barrel to tractor buyers on the same 
C. O. D. basis, a deposit with the order and bill of 
lading and draft attached to the shipment. We made 
the man we bought oil from put up a $20,000 bond to 
guarantee its quality. 

"You will hear it theorized that the long-term-credit 
arrangement is a great aid to increasing volume of 
sales. That may be true in some territories and with 
certain lines of merchandise. But here is how it worked 
out with engine plows: The makers built 150 for their 
own long-term-credit trade; they made more than 700 
for us. 

''When our 700 were sold their dealers still had 
twenty to thirty per cent of their owed-for gangs on 
their hands." 

This young reaper in the vineyard of cash sales told 
me he was planning to take on other tractor specialty 
attachments, among them a small separator capable of 
threshing from 600 to 800 bushels of grain a day. Cus- 
tomers will be given the privilege of buying these at- 
tachments for cash. The firm had also visualized a 
promising young market for silage cutters, feed grind- 
ers, and divers other appliances that the belt power of 
a small tractor could take care of. 

[158] 



"We have found," he explained, "that there is no 
better way to cHnch our selling arguments than to 
demonstrate how much the farmer can do with the 
belt power of his tractor. In our future selling policy 
we shall emphasize this attractive utility to the limit. 
But we shall take every possible precaution not to 
overstate the belt power, and strive to the utmost to 
locate for the purchaser the ideal apparatus to hitch 
up to his tractor." 

It struck me that the experience of this very wide- 
awake and down-to-date firm of distributors was worth 
dwelling on at length. They may be an exceptional 
trio of young men, and in their territory there may be 
an unusually high percentage of more prosperous 
farmers. 

Yet, allowing for all this, the record of their 
achievement stands out by itself. They set a pace for 
competitors that ran them off their feet. They bucked 
the competition of a so-called great monopoly and beat 
its selling force to a frazzle. 

There were twenty-nine other distributors for the 
Cold Dough Tractor Company working along similar 
lines. None of these twenty-nine could match the 
record of the Kansas City Hustlers, but there were 
some who produced amazing results on territory that a 
few years ago was regarded as absolutely hopeless for 
the marketing of any sort of tractor. 

Up to January i, 1916, the thirty distributors had 
marketed a total of 8000 tractors for cash within a 
period of two years. 

Undoubtedly this will sound to some farm-imple- 
ment purveyors like fiction. But it's cold fact. 

[159] 



Tractors are Not for the Physically Unfit 

A FARMER well along in the seventies wanted to 
buy a tractor. He was still robust and rela- 
L tively as hard as nails. He had been running 
an automobile for a year. He had been tending a 
thirty-horse-power gasoline engine for five years. He 
had installed an electric lighting-plant. He had devel- 
oped a rare skill for mechanics. Some of his neighbors 
had tractors and he had watched them operate. He 
had attended two tractor demonstrations. He had 
perused and reperused a small library of tractor cata- 
logues. 

His 200-acre farm, i6o acres in cultivation, was a 
profit-producer. He could afford to buy a tractor and 
pay spot cash for it. He had bought his car for cash. 
He had got the cash habit. As the itch to buy a tractor 
developed into higher stages, he determined to buy a 
tractor that couldn't be bought otherwise than on a 
cash basis. He reasoned simply: If I buy from those 
cash-sales chaps Fll not be holding the bag for any 
other fellow's bad debts. 

This old fellow didn't sit back home and wait for a 
tractor salesman to come out to the farm. He talked 
to a few dealers, but they were so shy of certain specific 
information he wanted to get that he made up his 

[ 160I 



i 



mind to go to headquarters. He would drop in at the 
nearest big branch house and put his hard questions 
to those higher up. So he packed his bag and went 
to town. 

The keen young manager of the branch house was 
on the job and received the venerable prospect with 
his accustomed graciousness. 

"Fve about made up my mind to buy one of your 
tractors," said the farmer, "but before I do I want to 
ask a few questions that are not answered in your cata- 
logue or covered in your advertisements." 

"Do you expect to run the tractor yourself?" asked 
the young manager. 

"Why, yes, of course," said the old fellow. "That's 
why Fm buying it." 

"Nothing doing — it can't be done," said the young 
man. 

The old farmer was flabbergasted. He stammered a 
plaintive: "W-w-what.? I — you don't mean I'm too 
old?" 

"That's the answer — pat," said the young man. 

"But," protested the farmer, "I run a car. I take 
care of it. There's nothing much I don't know about 
internal-combustion engines. There's my shop — I take 
care of all my machinery, binders, planters. Why, I 
can take a separator apart and put it together again. 
And I'm strong and well. I drive a three-bottom sulky. 
I guess you don't realize. Then all you fellows say that 
the tractor makes farming so much easier — not so 
much stock to handle and the heaviest work cleaned 
up and put behind in a jiffy. Five acres plowed while 
you'd be plowing one with a team, and so on." 
II [ i6i 1 



The young man continued to shake his head. 

*'Bad business," he said finally to the perplexed old 
man. *'Get out of your head that running a tractor is 
a soft job. There's all the difference in the world be- 
tween driving a tractor and steering a rubber-tired 
motor car over silk roads. It would be suicide for a 
man of your years, no matter how hard you think you 
are, to tackle it. You'd overstrain. The jar and jolt 
of it would shatter your system. A husky young boy 
could stand it. Any man in his prime will fit into it. 
If you could begin at it with an expert's skill and ex- 
perience you might suffer no damage. But it's my 
frank opinion, sir, that your experience lessons would 
about finish you. Tell me now — have you seen any- 
where, at demonstrations or in practical service, a man 
of your years driving a tractor.'*" 

The old man shook his head. 

"There you are. Of course you haven't. YouVe 
seen the young huskies at it. You've seen the big fel- 
lows in middle life with the hickory muscles and oak- 
board chests sitting back of it, smoking their pipes, 
handling the gears and plow levers and steering wheel 
as if it were pie. If you'd stepped up close you'd have 
noticed that they were sweating some. If you'd been 
sitting up beside them you'd have felt the jar and jolt 
and quiver of it. 

"My dear sir, I don't care how small the tractor is, 
it's not a rocking horse for an infant nor a rocking chair 
for grandfather. Possibly it isn't good business for me 
to tell you all this. I'm a sales manager and I'm hired 
to push sales. Your money's as good as any other fel- 
low's and on that business theory I suppose I could 

[162] 



i 



sell tractors to the lame, halt and blind and ease my 
conscience. If our sales were lagging back and I turned 
down a prospect like you Yd probably be counted in 
among the dubs who ought to be dispensing charity 
instead of making sales. 

"It just happens in your favor that we're about 
smothered with orders, wherefore I am displaying 
another sort of business wisdom by placing our product 
with the sort of men who can give us the best adver- 
tisement. I am turning down all prospects who don't 
look up to the mark as likely demonstrators of the 
Great Dane Tractor. 

"I am selecting out the leadership type of farmers 
wherever that is possible. Bunglers and boneheads can 
do us no end of harm. So can the physically unfit. 
When we hire experts to demonstrate our tractors we 
employ the best that money can buy. We want them 
to be wizards at it. 

"Suppose we were selling pianos. We wouldn't hire 
plumbers or gas-fitters to play them. Suppose you 
heard a piano going in a neighbor's house. If some 
talented artist were playing it you'd want to own one 
right away. If some dairy hand were pounding it with 
his eyes shut, just to make a noise, you'd never want 
to see a piano within fifty miles of your home. 

"Now, it's my guess that you'd feel a good deal the 
same about a tractor if you saw some square-head 
speeding it through a rock pile and turning zigzag and 
whirligig furrows. You'd regard it as a hellish contriv- 
ance. 

To sum it all up then, it would be rotten exploita- 
tion on my part to sell you a tractor." 

I163I 



The slick business man will chuckle over this little 
incident and probably feel inclined to compliment me 
on the resources of my imagination. I can only say 
in reply that I sat in at the colloquy. After having 
attended several tractor demonstrations I naturally 
could hardly believe the evidence of my senses. 

I vividly recalled a frantic-eyed, wire-haired sales- 
man who went about buttonholing octogenarians and 
shouting in their ear trumpets that running the Sugar 
Baby or the Little Buttercup Tractor was away yonder 
easier than wheeling an invalid's chair. The small 
tractor had been invented as a solace and comfort for 
old age. It would abolish for all time the inclination of 
farmers to retire from farming. It would bring count- 
less thousands of farmers out of retirement. Not only 
could old men run tractors, but elderly women who 
required more vigorous exercise than knitting as a 
nerve tonic would find tractor driving a refreshing and 
rejuvenating pastime. And so on. 

I admit that this is not the exact language I over- 
heard, but the exaggerated statements were as absurd. 
Automobile salesmen have not been guiltless on this 
score. If you ever set about the purchase of an auto- 
mobile you were probably sung to in many variations 
of enticing melody. And if later on you bought a car 
you must have had a quiet smile if not a gentle cuss 
to yourself over the amazing gap between promises 
and performance. You yourself were more than half 
to blame for the discrepancy. You desired the impos- 
sible. You yearned for the miracle of perfection. You 
chloroformed your common sense and lived in fairy- 
land. 

[164] 



I......,_. 

' gone a vast change in the past decade. As the motor 
car itself gradually evolved to standardization, so did 
the buying public. You might almost say that there 
are millions of auto-wise infants who have scarcely fin- 
ished teething. The schoolboy who cannot tell a car- 
buretor from a differential is regarded by his juvenile 
fellows as a stony boob. And the automobile sales- 
man no longer promises you Phaethon's chariot and 
the endurance performances of that supernal steed, 
Pegasus. 



[i6sl 



VI 

Visualizing the Tractor Market 

THE tractor salesman of this current year 1916 
is almost a new species. The fact that he has 
been a successful dispenser of automobiles or 
threshing machines may be a lift on his way, but it does 
not give him a running start. If he attempts anything 
in the nature of reckless exploitation he is going to 
make a false step, trip over a stubborn obstacle and 
have the solid earth come up and bruise him. 

The tractor sales manager has a good deal stifFer job 
in visualizing his market than the automobile sales 
manager. Anyone who has the cash or who can beg or 
borrow — yes, or purloin — the cash is an automobile 
prospect. A guardian may purchase one for an infant 
in arms and charge it up to the estate. The centena- 
rian, if financially fit, is just as good a prospect as any 
aristocratic young Ajax or humble piano mover. Ex- 
treme infancy or extreme old age is no bar; sex is no 
bar. Every and all callings and occupations are in- 
cluded. 

Relatively the visualization of the automobile pros- 
pect should be pie. Just consider what the tractor sales 
manager is up against: 

Ninety-something per cent of his market is confined 
to farming areas, w^herefore ninety-something per cent 

I 166] 



of his prospects must be farmers. The remaining frac- 
tion of market is confined to specific traction enter- 
prises, such as road making, the heavy hauHng of artil- 
lery and commissary in wartime, contract sod breaking 
and certain forms of ditching for drainage. For the 
time being we would better lay aside the special utility 
field for tractors. The farmer is the star of vaster mag- 
nitude and an analysis of what he is and what he 
farms must be the guiding beacon to the tractor sales 
manager. 

To begin with the top census total of 19 lo, there 
were 6,361,502 farmers in the United States. Now, to 
shave this total down by various processes of elimina- 
tion: 

First, let us subtract the negro farmers, as they are 
almost an irreducible minimum as tractor prospects. 
Of white farmers in 19 10 there were 4,771,000. This 
total may be divided between 3,162,584 owners and 
i>558,392 tenants. 

Admitting that there may be many thousand tenant 
prospects, the owner prospects are of major impor- 
tance. We must add to the ownership total 58,000 farm 
managers, who, generally speaking, operate large areas 
for nonresident owners. 

But it is not with mere numbers, color, nativity or 
tenure that the tractor sales manager must reckon. The 
farm — its size, kind and character — is his chief concern 
after he has come down to a working basis of totals. 
Unless he is a good deal of a visionary he will paste up 
somewhere within sight the total number of all Ameri- 
can farms of a hundred acres and larger. This should 
apply no matter how light a small tractor he is selling. 

[167] 



The kitchen garden tractor is arriving, to be sure, 
but it does not enter into the real farm-tractor reck- 
oning. Nor can we yet see where the one-plow tractor 
will fit into our agricultural economies. 

The hundred-acre and larger farm will offer an ex- 
cellent working margin, far too wide a one perhaps. 
I found several tractor sales managers who said offhand I 
that the eighty-acre fellow was just as ripe a small- 
tractor prospect as the hundred-acre man, but if you 
attempt to figure that way you are sure to race the 
engine of your optimism. Iowa is an ideal tractor state, 
because of the even contour of her farming areas, and 
if the eighty-acre man could use a tractor anywhere the 
exceptional opportunity should be in Iowa. 

When I saw the late Henry Wallace at Des Moines 
in January, 1916, he told me that he had been making 
a careful study of his state as a tractor prospect. He 
summed up the situation in this way: 

"The man with eighty acres has no business with a 
tractor at all. He has got to have a team of horses 
whether or not he has a tractor. If he took on a tractor 
he would be adding just so much overload mechanical 
power. As it is, he is struggling desperately to compete 
with the 160-acre and the 180-acre farmers. He has to 
equip his farm with practically the same machinery as 
the men with larger farms. His investment load is just 
as heavy and he has not nearly the margin of produc- 
tion possibilities of the big fellows. Unless the little 
fellow goes in for dairying he simply cannot stand the 
competition. 

"As the tractor comes into use on a sure profit basis 
the eighty-acre man will find himself tugging away to 

[168] 



the limit of economic endurance under the strain. He 
will simply be compelled to take on more land to farm 
or else go into dairying. At present there are only 6000 
eighty-acre farmers left in Iowa and that number will 
continue to shrink. 

*'The tractor will in the next few years make a big 
impression on the farming of the Middle West by in- 
creasing the size of farms and driving more farm folk 
to the towns and cities. As compensation, though, it 
will surely increase the prosperity of those who remain 
in farming. My behef is that the 150-acre man is the 
minimum light-tractor prospect, and that as soon as he 
learns how to adjust his farm management to the best 
economic service of the tractor he will soon expand 
into the 300-acre man." 

With these carefully considered words of wisdom in 
mind the tractor sales manager should carry the fol- 
lowing table in his head: 

Farms in the U. S. A. of 100 acres and over, 2,669,891 

Farms in the U. S. A. of 174 acres and over, 1,153,605 

Farms in the U. S. A. of 300 acres and over, 501,500 

Farms in the U. S. A. of 500 acres and over, 174,430 

The man who is selling a two-plow tractor would do 
well to add to this table that there are in the United 
States 1,516,286 farms of 100 to 174 acres. The man 
with the three-plow tractor will be more interested in 
the total number of farms from 174 to 260 acres in 
area — 534,191. The man with the four-plow tractor 
will probably confine his market to a large extent to 
the 443,984 farms of 260 to 500 acres. 

There is nothing like the magnificent range of pros- 
pects you will find in the automobile field, but there 

[169] 



is an inspiringly large market nevertheless. There is 
this great difference between the automobile and the 
tractor market: 

On January i, 1916, the United States had regis- 
tered in the various states 2,423,788 automobiles and 
motor trucks. The 19 15 sales totaled 686,998 cars. 
Production possibilities for 1916 were estimated at 
above one million cars and trucks. Installment selling 
was being launched on a wholesale plan. 

There are available no authoritative figures for trac- 
tors. Development has not yet reached a point where 
tractors are taxed and registered. Unless they are 
taxed they are not likely to be registered. And as I 
have remarked before, Kansas is the only state that 
so far has attempted to make a tractor census. 

It was roughly estimated last summer that there 
were about 20,000 tractors in use throughout the 
United States. This included steam and gas tractors, 
road engines and farm engines. 

So far as I have been able to gather estimates from 
various tractor manufacturers, more than 20,000 farm 
tractors were manufactured in 1915. The volume of 
production lagged way behind demand — emphatically 
so in the case of the light tractor. One light-tractor 
maker alleged that he could have doubled his sales if 
he could have turned out the product to sell. He sold 
5000 small tractors in 191 5. Another manufacturer 
made and sold 3500. Both these makers planned, so 
far as plant equipment could fulfill their hopes, to 
double their output in 1916. 

There is every possibility of at least 100 per cent in- 
crease in production for the current year. Some tractor 

[ 170] 



enthusiasts put this likely increase at 200 per cent. 
You also hear of one automobile manufacturer who is 
planning to build 100,000 pony-sized tractors a year. 
This would mean a deluge of tractors that would cause 
the hair of the old-line implement manufacturers to 
stand on end. But it is not at all likely to happen for a 
year or so, and when it comes, the tractor industry 
may have straightened itself out somewhat on a basis 
of standardization and fairly conservative exploitation. 

The big drive of the large tractor in the early boom 
days was made in the Northwest. The present drive 
of the small tractor — the two-plow, three-plow or four- 
plow machine — is being made in the East North Cen- 
tral, West North Central, and West South Central 
States. These divisions include: East North Central — 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin; West 
North Central — Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North 
Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas; West 
South Central — Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and 
Texas. 

Beyond this area tractor sales are at present re- 
garded a good deal in the light of seepage. The Middle 
Western prairies and the Great Plains afford ideal con- 
tours for the tractor. And the mechanism of the trac- 
tor has been developed to meet the requirements of 
level and gently rolling land. Ridge-running and gully- 
jumping tractors may evolve in the course of time. 
Meantime the mule and the horse are in no danger of 
becoming extinct in the hilly farming regions of the 
United States and Canada. 

The tractor sales manager will undoubtedly make a 
careful study of the plateau and plains regions. He will 

I 171 ] 



also discover that there are a good many millions of 
acres of level lands beyond the areas within which the 
tractor drive has begun and gathered amazing impetus. 

But of the total of 978,175 farms ranging in size from 
715 to 499 acres, 620,876 are in the East North Cen- 
tral, West North Central and West South Central 
States. Of the 125,295 farms of 500 to 1000 acres, 78,- 
558 are confined to the same locality. When you get up 
above 1000 acres you find the same preponderance. 
The total above 1000 acres is reckoned at 50,135. Of 
this number 12,875 ^^^ i^ ^^^ West North Central and 
13,396 in the West South Central. Then we must drag 
in the Pacific States of Washington, Oregon and Cali- 
fornia, with a total of 8135 big farms. 

The Southeastern Cotton States have about 7000 
plantations of 1000 acres and over, and in the Moun- 
tain States of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, 
New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada there are 
more than 6000 big ranches. The majority of these 
are stock ranches, though gradually they are coming 
more and more into the category of farms. Where the 
big rancher of the Pacific and Mountain States has 
swung away from ranching into farming he has been 
a pioneer tractor user. He has been the superprogres- 
sive fellow to try out tractor possibilities, and he had 
done this gamely and without the quiver of an eyelash 
while the tractor has been in the rawest stages of 
inefficiency. 



I 172] 



VII 

Knowledge of Farm Management Essential 

C)KING over the scramble for tractor plums 
during the present wave of great demand for 
small tractors one would think that census fig- 
ures were unavailable and that the general run of our 
farmers were crop gamblers rather than steady-going 
husbandmen following the calling of their ancestors or 
pursuing the fundamental instincts of progressive man- 
kind. 

I have talked to some promoters of tractor manufac- 
turing enterprises whose knowledge of farming seem- 
ingly had been gleaned from perusing the rhapsodies of 
back-to-the~land poets. If a farm was a lOO-acre farm, 
why there were undoubtedly lOO acres to till and 
plant to crop. They read of 900,000,000 acres in farms, 
but they did not follow along and learn that only fifty- 
four per cent was improved or in cultivation. They did 
not consider the immense area of pasture land that lies 
out from year to year as a matter of necessity in good 
farm management. Or if they did reckon with this area 
of pasture land, they simply jotted it down among 
the plowing possibilities overlooked by tractorless 
farmers. 

Both the tractor buyer and the tractor seller must in 
the future make a far more intensive study of farm 

I 173 1 



management than has hitherto been the custom, and 
this farm-management study must go away beyond 
just tillage, planting and harvesting. A small tractor 
does not eat its head off, but it is surely not going to 
earn its way simply because it can do all the heavy 
work on the small farm in seventeen days out of the 

365- 

Diversified utility for the tractor will be found to be 

the big selling argument of the future. The farmer 
should demand and the tractor should supply both a 
surplus of draw-bar pull and belt power. The small 
farm must be gaited and adjusted to utilize the limits 
of belt power the tractor affords. The accessory power 
of the tractor on its off days should be its big dividend 
payer. If there are only forty or fifty acres to crop, the 
necessity for diversifying the uses of the tractor are 
all the greater. 

I visited the headquarters of a great concern that has 
been marketing small tractors for a year and a half. 
They call it an Eight Horse Tractor. One of the op- 
timists of the management forces said that this little 
fellow was a distinct economy for the hundred-acre 
farm. I asked if they had checked up on results. Yes, 
they had been collecting and compiling a lot of corre- 
spondence. A great pile of letters was pointed out. I 
looked through them, but found no reports from the 
hundred-acre farmer — that is, none that were of any 
constructive value. Here are a few samples of what I 
did find. The first is a Kansas letter: 

I beg to inform you that I have one of your small tractors and 
am much pleased with it. I have but a small farm close to town, 
but bought the tractor principally to haul sand and cut silage. Have 

[174] 



had it since about May first and have k«pt it busy nearly every day. 
Plowed lOO acres of ground, pulling four disk plows, and it seemed 
to do it with ease. Plowed about ten acres a day at a cost of $1.25 
a day for coal oil and fifty cents a day for lubrication, making the 
cost $1.75 a day for each ten acres. It is very simple and does not 
give me any trouble. Am pulling one of your twelve-inch silage 
cutters now, cutting fifty tons a day, and it seems to do it with ease. 
The running expense seems to be just the same as with plowing. 

If there were a hundred acres to plow in this **Httle 
Kansas farm'* certainly it was not a hundred-acre 
farm. Here is another letter from another ** little'* 
Kansas farm: 

I think it a good investment, but cannot say for sure, as I have 
not kept an accurate account of the number of days or hours put 
in. But I made a rough estimate and it has cost me about ten or 
fifteen cents an acre for plowing. The disking, rolling and harrowing, 
which I did at one and the same time, cost me from five to seven 
cents an acre besides my own labor. 

I plowed fifty-five acres with a mold-board two-bottom fourteen- 
inch gang, and fifty-five acres with a four-disk twelve-inch gang, 
and I have harrowed, disked and rolled 130 acres for a total cost in 
coal oil, gas, distillate, lubricating oil and cup grease of twenty-four 
dollars delivered on my farm six and a half miles northwest of Salina. 
My farm is old black rubber gumbo of the worst type. I plowed but 
twenty acres with the teams. 

Here is a letter from Hastings, Nebraska: 

By having your small tractor I only keep one team the year 
round, making the tractor do all the work that it would take six 
head of horses to do. I have kept track of what it has cost me since 
I bought it. It cost forty-seven cents an acre to take care of no 
acres, plowing, harrowing, disking, drilling, pulling a 12-8 drill and 
a ten-foot drag in front of drill. I have used the tractor day in and 
day out since I bought it and have had no trouble at all. I believe 
if proper care is given the tractor it will last the life of a horse, as 
I am all through with my farm work and do not have to worry about 
feeding a bunch of horses through the winter. 

Of course there were other letters containing laments 
and wails of grief. Some farmers had had trouble in 
starting; others complained of the gears. Some had 

[175] 



had fine success in baling hay, shredding corn, thresh- 
ing grain, and in road work. It was palpable in many 
of the letters that the writers had been appointed 
agents to sell the tractor. But practically all the letters 
were based upon one season's experience. So far as I 
could see there were no letters of optimistic viewpoint 
worth considering from the hundred-acre farmer. The 
size of the farm was rarely stated, but on the average 
they must have run from i6o to 300 acres. 

While still on the topic of the tractor market and 
exploitation methods I will set down a little list of ad- 
vantages that are almost universally alleged in favor 
of the tractor: 

More economical because it utilizes mechanical power, 
which can be produced more cheaply than horse power. 

Concentrates power, thus reducing the amount of man- 
labor for farm operations, as one man can easily operate 
a gas tractor with a pulling capacity equal to forty horses, 
and at the same time have more dependable control over 
the power than would be possible with horses. 

Unlimited endurance, being capable of working day 
and night during its entire life if necessary. 

Requires comparatively small space for housing, and 
such shelter as is required need not be built for warmth 
but only for protection from the elements. 

Consumes fuel of relatively small bulk, requiring little 
space for storage. 

Requires no care when not in use. 

Does better work because the quality is not lowered out 
of sympathy for tired animals. 

Can be used not only for field work, but also for belt 
work. 

[176] 



Is not subject to sudden loss by disease. 

Breaks can be repaired by substituting a new part. 

Not all these so-called advantages are axiomatic. 
There was the case of the North Dakota farmer who 
had driven into town and was boasting in the general 
store of the great acreage of grain he was putting in 
with his tractor. He had just got along to computing 
the cost of plowing when he was called to the telephone. 
The Swede at the other end of the wire announced: 

"Boss, Big Ben ban bust! I tank you better bring 
new Big Ben out, for I tank rain tomorrow." 

"Anybody hurt.?" asked the farmer. 

" I tank Olaf hurt some," replied the farm hand. " I 
tank his leg broke an' maybe arm too, but he don't 
wake up so I can ask him. But I tank rain tomorrow, 
boss, so we ban need new Big Ben." 

Of course, this was back in the days when the big 
steam tractors had a habit of popping off Hke a super- 
heated Mississippi steamboat. The modern internal 
combustion engine is infinitely nearer perfection today 
than were those early devices. Nevertheless we are 
not yet able to be cocksure of tractor advantages. 

Tractor benefits must be studied on their relative 
merits. There is an immense amount of research work 
ahead of us, both in the manufacturing plant and on 
the farm. The returns from the small tractor are just 
beginning to come in. Presently we shall be able to 
average up contending claims for specific types. 

The makers of the three-wheel tractor are gathering 
their data, and the makers of the four-wheel trac- 
tor are gathering theirs. Disputes as to the most 

12 [ 177 1 



advantageous size of tractor remain unsettled. The all 
purpose three-plow tractor men scofF at the two-plow 
tractor. Makers of a variety of sizes are still uncertain 
concerning what the future popular size will be. You 
get glowing reports of the operation of the bull-wheel 
in the furrow, and from another source you hear the 
bull-wheel in the furrow condemned as a hideous mis- 
take. 

Is it any wonder that some tractor exploiters feel 
inclined to tear their hair.f* They realize that a great 
industry is in the bud, but they are completely baffled 
concerning what the fruit will look like in its final 
stages of cultural development. 



I178I 



VIII 

The Great Selection Problem for the Farmer 

GOING it blindfolded! That is the situation 
' with the majority of farmers who are picking 
' tractors today. 

It is not the fault of the tractor makers any more 
than it is the fault of the farmers. You may standard- 
ize the quality of your tractor to a superfine degree, 
but how about the standardization of the purchaser's 
ingenuity, skill, versatility, good or bad fortune in 
crop production? 

You hear many sound arguments against the eco- 
nomic success of the small tractor, but you hear none 
to controvert the fact that the small tractor has come 
as an incalculable boon to the industry. The popular- 
priced tractor has in the short span of two years pro- 
vided resources for the tractor industry that could not 
have been obtained in a score of years had it not been 
developed. The pony tractor has created cash-sale 
possibilities that could not have been contrived by any 
other means, and without cash-sale possibilities the 
tractor industry would have labored along under the 
same dead weight that has hampered the moderniza- 
tion of the implement industry. 

From the manufacturer's standpoint volume of pro- 
duction was the great stumbling-block. A concern that 

[ 179] 



could not hope to make more than a few hundred 
tractors a year had Httle hope of cutting down manu- 
facturers' costs. A manufacturer compelled to make 
all his own parts and castings could develop only a 
special narrow market for a quality product at a qual- 
ity price. 

If a group of manufacturers had got together and 
standardized certain parts and agreed to take the out- 
put of some specialty manufacturer of parts, a definite 
economy could have been accomplished. But the 
spirit of competition was not headed that way. Each 
separate maker seemed to desire as many selling argu- 
ments in favor of his tractor as there were parts. He 
wanted to be able to say that he had a better make of 
motor than the other fellow, a better carburetor, better 
ignition, better transmission, better cooling and lubri- 
cating systems, a better contrivance of bull-wheels or 
caterpillar sleeves for pulling and balancing the load, 
better belt-drive connections. 

I heard it said that one manufacturer had boasted: 
"There are 22,000 pieces in my tractor and practically 
all of them are different and better than the pieces in 
any other tractor." Heaven help the owner who needed 
a few nuts and bolts of this tractor in a hurry! 

When you get down to fundamentals, this sort of 
thing has occurred in the history of every mechanical 
development. The design is crudely direct and simple 
at the start — crudely inefficient too. Then the refining 
process begins and is attended by a mania for com- 
plexities. The next step is to eliminate the complexi- 
ties and gradually approach a refined simplicity. 
Throughout every step the ratio of efficiency is being 

[ 180 1 



increased and the road to standardization is being 
smoothed down. 

Thanks to the small tractor the industry has already 
approached such standardization that it is possible for 
thirty-two makers to use one type of motor — that is, 
a type of motor made by one manufacturer. Sizes and 
adjustments are adapted to fit the special needs of 
different tractors. The same tendency will be followed 
in the cases of carburetors, magnetos, radiators, gears, 
transmissions, differentials, and so on. The develop- 
ment of the automobile has not only made this possible, 
but has really forced it upon the tractor industry as 
the only economic method of cutting the cost of pro- 
duction. 

Automobile engineers have really done a great deal 
for tractor manufacturers by refining the essential 
parts of tractor mechanism. Both industries are striv- 
ing now toward the perfection of a system of coal-oil 
carburetion. While some oil-burning tractors are ad- 
vertised as equal in efficiency to any rival gasoline 
burners, they have yet a long way to go to prove that 
the combustion efficiency of kerosene equals the com- 
bustion efficiency of gasoline. Nor, as a matter of fact, 
will they ever succeed in raising the B. T. U. ratio of 
kerosene to the B. T. U. ratio of gasoline. What they 
may do and what they are striving toward is to develop 
a combustion mechanism that will give kerosene the 
same fuel dependability as gasoline. If they accom- 
plish this, they will achieve great economy. 

As a general thing, farmers in this country have been 
learning a good deal more about the four-cylinder high- 
speed type of motor in the past few years than they 

[i8i] 



have about one and two cylinder oil-burning tractor 
motors. Manufacturers who jumped into the tractor 
game overnight felt that they could supply the popular 
demand by simply grabbing a four-cylinder automo- 
bile motor, common types of automobile carburetors 
and magnetos, and slapping them into any old sort of 
tractor frame. They suffered from the obsession that if 
a tractor ran and developed a definite amount of 
power, that was all that was necessary. They didn't 
even bother to hitch on a plow and see if the thing 
would buck or not. 

In the days of the 50,000-pound leviathan tractors 
no one bothered about bucking propensities. The chief 
thing was to get it started and keep it going. When 
they got down to the 4000 and 5000 pound tractor it 
was not so much a case of spinning the flywheel and 
keeping the motor warmed up to its job as of keeping 
the "featherweight" from imitating an aeroplane after 
the plows had bitten into the sod. Nice adjustments 
and balances of weight were required. The plow hitch 
became essentially important, to avoid side-draft and 
to get the highest efficiency of pull. 

A great many of these little fellows were underpow- 
ered, even for their weight, at the start. Some of them 
still are. The great need for surplus power was not 
fully understood. How could it have been otherwise 
when the rush products that were flung on the market 
had had practically no testing out.? Early last winter 
I was talking to a manufacturer who has been making 
a medium-sized tractor advertised to develop twelve 
horse power on the drawbar. I asked if he were going 
into the popular-price field. 

[ 182 1 



"Oh, yes," he said, "we're going to get out a little 
one. I have an engineer coming down in a day or so 
to draw some plans." 

"Then," I said, "I suppose it'll be a year or two at 
least before you commence to market it." 

"Year, your hat!" he returned breezily. "We'll be 
turning 'em out in ninety days after we approve of the 
plans. The time is ripe to sell the baby size right now 
and we are going to get into the running while the run- 
ning is good. We're making five a day of this medium 
size now and we can't begin to fill the orders." 

It is the barest of all chances that this man will turn 
out a product that will render any sort of dependable 
service. But then, his chief desire is to make something 
that will sell, and sell in sufficient volume to make a 
killing while the going is good. 

Just for the sake of drawing a parallel, take the case 
of an Ohio tractor manufacturer who parts his name 
in the middle with the word Thorough. He has been 
manufacturing a four-plow tractor for five years — one 
of the very best of its size and type; sold to develop 
fifteen horse power on the drawbar, and honestly made 
to develop a surplus above that. It is a real-quality 
product selling for $1750. The first year he made 
twenty-five tractors, the second year fifty, the third 
year 250, and this year he will make 500. Before he 
sold a single tractor, however, he experimented for 
two years with twenty different models. 

This man's early selling experience convinced him 
that the greater number of small farmers would not 
buy four-plow tractors. The man with 200 acres of 
grain could operate it economically, but there seemed 

I 183] 



to be few good prospects operating less than 300 to 
400 acres. He might double his sales from year to year 
for a few years and yet make no advances in the vol- 
ume of production. So he got his experts to work 
designing a ten-horse-power tractor that could be sold 
for about $750. The first model was built three years 
ago and twenty-five of these models were distributed 
in different parts of the country for experiment — dis- 
tributed, not sold. 

These models were tested through an entire season 
for tillage and for belt power. They must have diver- 
sified utility and a reserve of power above selling speci- 
fications. Model No. I fell down. Here and there it 
made good. But the average of excellence fell below 
fifty per cent. The following year Model No. 2 was 
built, and the tests were repeated. It was a big im- 
provement over Model No. i, yet there were some 
serious kinks to be ironed out. The average of effi- 
ciency was higher, but not high enough. This man 
was not looking for a killing. His aim was to found a 
big business on bedrock that had no fissures in it. He 
was in no passionate haste to make money. He had 
spent many years of his life building up a reputation 
for business integrity and he was jealous of that repu- 
tation. He had amassed a large fortune slowly and 
conservatively and that was the way he intended to 
develop a tractor. Hence he built Model No. 3. 

He introduced No. 3 as his 1916 model, having 
demonstrated to his satisfaction that it was a depend- 
able mechanism. He had built forty experimental 
machines, but none to sell. He had selected forty 
farmers in widely scattered farming areas to try out 

[ 184] 



Model No. 3 for the entire season. His experts had 
picked the farms and the farmers. They had covered 
the East and the South, the Middle West, the South- 
west, the Northwest and the Pacific States. Model 
No. 3 was distributed to tackle almost every type of 
soil and a wide range of climatic and soil conditions. 
It pulled plows over platterflat prairies, over rolling 
meadows and aslant the terraced hills of Georgia and 
the Carolinas. It tackled shale deposits and tule 
gumbo, the staked plains of the Texas Panhandle and 
the cut-over lands of Northern Wisconsin and Minne- 
sota. It was driven by farmers who are expert me- 
chanicians and by farmers who are raw beginners. 
It was tested for the highest possible efficiency in the 
hands of the wizard and for the lowest standard of 
efficiency in the hands of the bungler. 

The little fellow that comes through a test of this 
character and stands up on a basis of all-round per- 
formance is an honest product that both the dealer and 
the farmer should scout for. Nor is this thorough 
method of testing out uncommon in the tractor field. 
At least a score of the manufacturers of recognized 
standing and stability are practically as thorough. 
This applies to both old-line tractor makers and imple- 
ment manufacturers and to some few of the new in- 
vaders. It applies also to several automobile manufac- 
turers who have been experimenting with tractors that 
have not yet come on the market. 

But there are some big manufacturers of long-estab- 
lished reputation in other lines who have picked their 
tractor products out of the air and are tossing them on 
the market without putting their performances to 

I 185] 



anything resembling thorough and honest tests. They 
are relying upon their names to sell these bubble 
flimsies and trusting to the hurry-up eflForts of their 
engineers to eradicate the imperfections. In such cases 
the purchasers will be the goats, and their failure will 
determine the radical changes that must eventually be 
made to give service and honest value. 

A few of the heads of these concerns have simply 
been deluded by so-called experts. They are too busy 
themselves to look into minor details, and must take 
the word of their subordinates. Possibly they conceive 
that the tractor has been sufficiently standardized to 
make it possible simply to assemble standard parts 
into a working unit, as is being done successfully in the 
automobile industry. If they look into this closely, 
however, they will soon learn that the tractor has at 
least half a dozen years of evolution ahead of it before 
its construction is a comparatively simple task of 
experimental design and assembly. 



[i86] 



IX 

Shall the Tractor Fit the Farm or the Farm 
Fit the Tractor 

NOW that small tractors — five, six, seven, eight, 
nine and ten drawbar horse power — are being 
produced in great numbers, there is no end of 
discussion over the ideal size of farm to utilize them 
to advantage. Some academic theorists tell you flatly 
that any tractor developing less than eight horse power 
on the drawbar is a joke on a farm of any size. It is 
of utterly no use to the two-horse farm, you hear, be- 
cause it cannot replace the team for cultivating and 
light hauling, and unless the owner can do considerable 
contract work for neighbors, he will never begin to get 
his money's worth out of his tractor. He will soon find, 
after he has tried out his tractor for a season, that he 
will have to add to the size of his farm as his only 
means of economic salvation. 

It is further urged against the pony-sized tractor 
that it is not large enough to reduce man labor to any 
appreciable extent, nor powerful enough in many in- 
stances to perform all the belt work required on the 
home farm. 

The salient argument for the big tractor has long 
been its ability to cut the cost of man labor. Take a 
forty-eight tractor for example. With one operator and 

[187] 



one plowman it could plow from twenty-five to thirty 
acres a day under favorable conditions. Where the 
land was free from trash a self-lifting plow could dis- 
pense with the services of the plowman. It would re- 
quire seven or eight men and from twenty-eight to 
forty horses to produce the same results. 

But the scope of such operations was extremely nar- 
row, nor were the economies to be accomplished always 
definite. Hundreds of big grain farms tried the big 
tractor and went back to horses. The by-product 
utility of a tractor's belt power was overlooked to a 
great extent. 

As the small tractor came into being its belt power 
was overcapitalized rather than overlooked. The ma- 
chines it should operate on the farm — in theory — were 
not built down to the belt power of the small tractor. 
This was true of separators, corn shellers, silage cutters 
and various harvesting machines. The overrated small 
tractor fell down hopelessly when it came to the actual 
appliance of the much-vaunted belt power. There fol- 
lowed a two-way scramble to straighten out this defect 
— the rebuilding of the motor to develop more power 
and an appeal to the manufacturers of belt-power 
appliances to make smaller types adaptable to smaller 
tractors. 

Nor was tillage apparatus quite ready for the arrival 
of the small tractor. Special hitches and adjustments 
had to be devised. It was found that the principles 
that had worked out well with the large-tractor gangs 
could not be followed with assured success with the 
small-tractor gangs. There was the ever-present ten- 
dency of the small-tractor operator to overload the 

[i88] 



machine. Purchasers had been promised more power 
than the tractor could deUver, and there was no margin 
of safety. Told that the tractor could plow an acre an 
hour or thereabout, they would begin at the maximum 
and then speed it up. 

The careful shifting of gears to produce the most 
engine efficiency cannot be learned in a day, even with 
the automobile. With the tractor this skill comes much 
more gradually. Drivers completely forgot how they 
had driven their plow teams through uneven soil. They 
expected the tractor to wade through anything with- 
out changing gears, without paying close attention to 
the nice adjustments of the plow lift. The three great 
trouble-breeders with the small tractor have been: 
Overloading, reckless driving and neglect of lubrica- 
tion. 

In behalf of the farmer it must be said that he was 
only partially to blame for overloading. So many of 
the small tractors had been overrated as to both draw- 
bar pull and belt power that he was naturally misled. 
Manufacturers — the reliable ones — have hastened to 
correct this error. Tractors that were at first offered 
as three-plow tractors are now being sold as two-plow 
tractors. Some of them will pull three plows nine or 
ten inches deep through light loams, but when it comes 
to heavy soil they are two-plow tractors. It is wise to 
list them and advertise them as such, allowing the pur- 
chaser to exhaust surplus power at his own risk. 

The returns from worth-while economy and endur- 
ance tests of the small tractor have just begun to come 
in. They are not as yet comprehensive enough to base 
any final judgment on. I have met some men who 

[189] 



predict that the two-plow tractor will be pretty gener- 
ally discarded in a few years as too small — too small at 
any price. They predict that the tractor that will be 
most generally used in the future must deliver at least 
an honest ten-horse power on the drawbar and pull 
at least three plows from seven to ten inches deep. 

The three-plow tractor, they argue, will not only 
render the small farmer efficient service, but will ac- 
complish for him immediate economies that will enable 
him to increase his farming operations and expand his 
farm area. This will be a case of enlarging the farm 
to fit the tractor. The other way round will never work 
out. A cropping area can never be pared down eco- 
nomically to fit the size of a tractor. 

Data collected from Illinois and Indiana prove 
pretty conclusively that farmers who began with small 
tractors bought larger ones; that they graduated from 
the two- and three-plow class into the four-plow class. 
In few if any recorded instances, say those who have 
been gathering statistics, have farmers who began with 
four-plow tractors bought down into the two- and 
three-plow class. But it should be explained that the 
majority of those who bought large tractors have 
added to their cropping area by buying or renting 
additional land. 

One close observer of tractor tests — actual farming 
tests — had this to say: "The data I have collected 
show that the fifteen-thirty tractor has had a larger per- 
centage of successes than any other size except the 
very smallest ones. These very smallest ones, however, 
have not been in use for a sufficient length of time to 
enable the users to give an opinion of definite value. 

[ 190] 



"As I size up the situation, the manufacturers of the 
pony-sized tractor have built for demand, not because 
they believe it to be the best machine for the average 
farmer. In fact, many of them are convinced that the 
pony-sized tractor is altogether undesirable and will do 
more harm than good. But" — a vastly important but 
if you follow closely — *' there is no reason to doubt that 
the small tractor, selling at a low price, is destined to 
put the industry on a more substantial basis than it has 
ever known. Frequently a farmer will take a chance 
with a small tractor when nothing could persuade him 
to buy a larger one. This will tend to expand the field 
of experimentation, and is sure to increase the general 
demand for all sizes of tractors." 

Too many of the theories you hear argue round in 
circles. They begin with a flimsy premise and wind up 
with a contradiction. The pony tractor is a fallacy, 

hut . The big tractor is a fallacy, hut . The 

medium-sized tractor is ideal, hut . The great puz- 
zle for the future must be to determine the happy 
medium. And that happy medium must either be a 
medium-sized little or a medium-sized big tractor. As 
I see it, nothing can be a greater help toward the solu- 
tion than volume of production that will gradually 
bring down the cost of all sizes of tractors — ^just what 
has happened in the automobile industry. And the 
greater the volume of production, the nearer the ap- 
proach to standardization. 

If this reasoning is sound, it must follow that the 
small tractor, instead of being an economic fallacy, is 
the greatest of all economic boons both to the farmer 
and to the manufacturer. There is an infinitely better 

[191I 



chance for the small tractor to grow up to husky effi- 
ciency than there is for the big tractor to shrink. 

As for the influence of the tractor on the size of 
farms, that problem is likely to lead to endless specula- 
tion until we have gathered sufficient statistics to guide 
us. It is both a tractor problem and a man problem. 
It is a problem involving land tenure and types of 
farming. It is a mechanical problem and a livestock 
problem. It is likely to become one of our greatest 
farm-management problems. Furthermore it will be- 
come a social problem, as it will mean a still greater 
decrease in our rural population. 

The efficiently mechanized farm of the future is 
something to look forward to hopefully, and I believe 
that the small tractor will be the greatest influence 
ever brought to bear toward this end, not only in the 
United States but in the whole world. 



[ 192 



X 

Design, Parts, Service — The Big Little Things 

IF YOU happen to buy a simple little tractor, with 
only ii,ooo pieces in it, you are in a fair way to 
acquire some fundamental experience in mechan- 
ics. The ii,ooo pieces are not all parts, to be sure, 
or what are commonly called parts. Nuts, bolts, 
washers, lugs or spuds, pinions, cotter pins, radiator 
pieces, carburetor pieces, engine pieces, magneto pieces, 
pipes, tubings and joinings in the lubricating system, 
grease cups, oil cups, frame braces and rivets, wheel 
spokes, steering-gear pieces and innumerable odds and 
ends in the metal fabric make up the dismaying total. 

A very small fraction of this total is working parts. 
Every piece will bear some specific burden of wear and 
tear, but a good many thousand pieces are indestruct- 
ible so far as the life of a tractor is concerned. 

Some time look over a tractor, an automobile or any 
other mechanical contrivance of necessarily complex 
fabric that has played out and been scrapped and you 
cannot help but be amazed at the number of pieces 
that survived intact. It is a good deal the same with 
the human anatomy. Even in the case of the centena- 
rian whose vital spark has suddenly gone out there 
are innumerable tissues and bones and tubes that 
could, seemingly, have borne their burden for many 
13 [ 193 ] 



^ 



years were not the heart engine and its carburetor 
valves, the lubricating and the respirating system, 
played out. 

A good many tractor prospects are asking: Where 
will we find the greatest simplicity in tractor design, 
the fewest pieces, the fewest parts? Unfortunately, 
there is no brief or comprehensive answer to this ques- 
tion. At this writing there are approximately 170 
tractors, no two of them alike. In another year prob- 
ably 200 or more, each a separate design, will be 
offered for sale. 

There is such wide variance of design that classifica- 
tion is almost impossible. We have one-wheel, two- 
wheel, three-wheel, four-wheel tractors, caterpillars of 
several types, steel mules, iron horses, auto-plows and 
plow-autos, oil-gas and gas-oil, crude-oil burners, kero- 
sene burners and gasoline burners. There are distinc- 
tive plow-pull types and distinctive all-purpose types, 
likewise special types for hauling; there are one- 
cylinder, two-cylinder, four-cylinder and six-cylinder 
tractors. 

This great diversity of design is due primarily to the 
fact that there has not been sufficient experimentation 
to permit of careful analysis of the fundamentals of 
tractor design by tractor engineers. The early develop- 
ment of the tractor was confined to the plowing engine. 
Now, with the intrusion and immense popularity of 
the small tractor, there is a scramble in the direction 
of the all-purpose tractor. It is a mad, mad scramble. 

To produce a satisfactory plowing tractor required a 
combination of certain elements. An approach was 
being made to simplification and standardization. 

[ 194 ] 



I 



To provide a tractor combining in itself high excel- 
lence for plowing, cultivation, harvesting, road hauling 
and belt work required the addition of a great many 
elements not at all necessary in a plow-purpose tractor. 

To get anywhere the all-plow tractor had to work 
up to deliver large units of power. The all-purpose 
tractor worked down to diversify and in that way to 
multiply small units of power. The all-plow tractor 
soon oversold its market; the all-purpose tractor, in 
the infancy of development, cannot seem to meet 
demand. 

You must follow a precipitate decline from the 
50,000-pound tractor to the 3000-pound tractor. Placed 
side by side they are about as alike as the zebra and the 
hairy mammoth. They are creatures of utterly differ- 
ent species. The big one- and two-cylinder tractors 
that have come down to date are fairly true to species. 
The "featherweight" is a hybrid cross with a predomi- 
nating strain of automobile in him. 

The big type was based upon stationary-engine 
practice. Its sponsers declare that any machine, to be 
a success at farm work, must be made heavy, to stand 
rough usage and continuous service. It must be heavy, 
to carry the single or double cylindered motors with 
large cylinder dimensions. The bearing surfaces must 
be large. 

The transmission system is usually of rough-cast 
gears, of coarse pitch and large diameter. These gears, 
too large to inclose, must be run in the open. Frames 
and wheels must be proportionately heavy. 

Carburetion, cooling and ignition systems are of 
the utmost simplicity, designed for practically constant 

[195] 



load and speed. Fine adjustment or flexible control 
is not considered. 

It is argued for these big, crude fellows that they are 
more nearly fool-proof than any other type; that a 
one-cylinder engine gives half as much trouble as a 
two-cylinder, one-fourth as much trouble as a four, and 
one-sixth as much trouble as a six. In bygone days you 
heard this same argument from automobile manu- 
facturers. 

The fool-proof argument has very little force in this 
mechanized epoch as a selling argument. It is human 
nature to like to monkey with the buzz-saw. 

The contention of designers of tractors built along 
automobile lines, that the use of single or double cyl- 
inders of large dimensions is incorrect for tractor duty 
because it is necessary to make the tractor '* hope- 
lessly " heavy to obtain proper wearing surface or bear- 
ing area has met pretty general popular approval. It 
makes its strongest appeal to the automobile-owning 
farmer. More than ninety per cent of the automobiles 
owned by farmers are four-cylinder light cars. 

Unquestionably, however, the light-tractor advo- 
cates have been carried away by their own enthusiasm. 
They have too much of the automobile and too little 
of the tractor in their machines. That has already been 
pretty thoroughly demonstrated. The evidence is ap- 
parent this year, when you find most of the experi- 
enced tractor designers either bringing out or prepar- 
ing to bring out tractors combining both the heavy 
type and the light type of construction. 

The arguments for this interweaving of design are 
compromise arguments — an acknowledgment of the 

[196] 



good points of both designs. But even these com- 
promise types have not followed any standard. Some 
producers of the heavy type merely cut down size 
and weight by using better materials where greater 
strength was necessary and applying anti-friction bear- 
ings where the loads were heaviest. Builders of "too- 
light" designs followed the opposite course, building 
up and strengthening, adding more power units to the 
motor. 

The logical future development of the tractor will 
undoubtedly be along the line of combining the knowl- 
edge and experience of the agricultural engineer, the 
automobile engineer and the tractor engineer. Each 
class has much to learn. Some of the leading automo- 
bile engineers of the country are now employed in 
making a minute study of tractor mechanics and agri- 
cultural economics. Mere mechanical skill will not 
serve to produce any special ideal type of tractor. The 
agricultural engineer can furnish invaluable informa- 
tion concerning farm management, cropping condi- 
tions, soil textures, soil contours, the possibilities for 
replacing horses, the possibilities for the diversifica- 
tion of belt-power, and so on. One of the very best 
light tractors on the market was designed by a farmer 
turned mechanic. 

The automobile engineers, seeking mechanical re- 
finements, have already made a big impression by 
compelling the use of better building materials. Their 
influence is largely responsible for the growing use of 
cut and hardened gears, inclosed gearing run in oil and 
moderately light high-speed motors. There is both 
a positive need and an increasing demand for the 

[ 197 ] 



intensive use of high-grade materials, as well as for 
the development of design to take the utmost advan- 
tage of quantity production. 

The great automobile manufacturers who are un- 
doubtedly coming into the game will seek the broadest 
market. They have the mistakes of scores of tractor 
manufacturers to build upon; they have their own 
selling and exploitation organizations to wield as a 
powerful weapon of distribution — a much more flexible 
and effective weapon than has ever been used in the 
tractor and implement industries. How effective? 
Answer: Approximately one million automobiles sold 
to farmers who did not absolutely need them in their 
business. Sold for cash too — don't forget that! 



[198 



XI 

Building for Service 

YOU will find in the tractor industry today two 
very distinct classes of manufacturers: One 
that is building for service and established repu- 
tation, and another that is building to catch the popu- 
lar fancy. It should be worth while for the farmer to 
inquire carefully into the standing of the manufac- 
turer. Do not simply ask the dealer or salesman a few 
casual questions. Write to your agricultural college. 
You may receive a noncommittal reply, but you will 
get a lead on the situation. 

Simply because a tractor is a new design does not 
necessarily condemn it, but if it is simply a design 
fathered by a haphazard idea and you buy it the 
chances are all in favor of your paying a very heavy 
tax to prove or disprove the worth of that tractor. 

The cautious tractor purchaser will make careful 
inquiry concerning the available supply of parts and 
their cost. The life of tractor parts is bound to be 
problematical. The wearing parts of a tractor bear a 
terrific strain. The least little negligence in taking care 
of lubrication may burn out a bearing or destroy a 
bushing. You want to know how soon you can replace 
these and at what cost. Fuel and water systems are far 
from infallible. 

[ 199 1 



The bull gear carries a tremendous strain. There is 
a definite economic advantage when the bull gear is 
made up of several segments. You are not likely to 
have more than one segment go at a time and then the 
repair costs are but a fraction what they are if the bull 
gear is a single casting. Of course, the material of which 
the gears are made makes all the difference in the world. 

But, by all means, look into every possible detail of 
parts service. A good many tractor manufacturers 
will supply you with parts catalogues. If the prices of 
these parts are not given, write for information. Check 
up with the dealer on the information you receive. 
Learn what parts he carries in stock and what he 
charges for them. 

The catalogue put out by the manufacturer of one 
small tractor lists each separate part, its weight, price 
and the code name for it. Also there are special lists 
of magneto and carburetor parts. This manufacturer 
fixes the price at which the dealer handling his tractor 
shall sell parts, allowing a fair margin of profit to the 
man who keeps the parts in stock. 

The dealer is not asked to keep all the parts listed 
in stock, by a handsome margin. How many and what 
parts he keeps in stock will depend to a large extent on 
the number of tractors he has sold. Generally he need 
carry only the working parts that bear the heaviest 
load and are the most liable to give way because of 
overloading, careless driving or accident. Defective 
parts are replaced free of charge by responsible manu- 
facturers, provided the broken parts are sent on so the 
manufacturer may have proof that there was a posi- 
tive defect in the material. 

[ 200 ] 



The dealer is not compelled to carry a heavy stock 
of parts at his own risk of never disposing of them. 
The manufacturer I have mentioned makes the pro- 
vision that if any of the parts the dealer has carried 
are undisposed of at the end of the year he will take 
them back. 

This sort of parts service is a big advance over the 
old-time methods in the tractor industry. Many a 
tractor owner, having broken an essential part, has 
written to the factory, only to find that a special cast- 
ing would have to be made, and at almost prohibitive 
cost. Tractor owners have told me of paying twenty 
dollars and more for castings that with any adequate 
supply of parts on hand should not have cost more 
than a dollar or two at the most. 

The dealer who is going to sell tractors to farmers 
cannot look too carefully into the details of parts 
service and repair service. The closer attention he pays 
to this the better will be his prospects as a tractor dis- 
tributor. Many manufacturers are providing tractor 
schools for dealers and farmers. All the agricultural 
colleges are building up special tractor courses. Short 
courses in tractor mechanics will undoubtedly become 
immensely popular in the future. 

There are alluring profits to be made in tractor sales 
by the dealer in the future, but this race is going to be 
to the swift, the energetic, the competent — to the man 
who makes a careful, detailed study of the tractor as a 
machine and who knows the value of this machine in 
the district he serves. 

To those unable to attend tractor schools and 
short courses in tractor mechanics there are available 

[ 20I ] 



correspondence courses which, if they only whet the 
appetite for more knowledge, will have served a very 
useful purpose. The dealer should not only interest 
himself in all these special aids to his business as a 
tractor distributor, but he should urge the farmer 
who has declared himself a tractor prospect to equip 
himself with all the knowledge and skill he may obtain. 
The farmer, on his part, will do well to observe closely 
what the dealer knows about his product. 

The newcomers to the tractor industry, who drove 
their selling forces into the market on the double-quick 
under the cash-sales banner, first chose the automo- 
bile dealer as a distributor. 

The automobile dealer understood cash sales and he 
also knew the value of intelligent, dependable service, 
particularly parts service. The automobile dealer knew 
engine troubles, carburetor troubles, ignition troubles. 
The automobile dealer knew what service to give away 
and what service to charge hard cash for. He had not 
acquired the habit of giving away service to keep credit 
customers in good humor. 

In the experimental drive for cash-sales distribution 
it was simply the natural thing to tie up so far as pos- 
sible with the automobile dealer. But it wasn't long 
before there arose clamorous protest from the imple- 
ment dealer. He came to the front in large numbers to 
present his just claims. He urged his manifest advan- 
tages over the automobile dealer in that he was in 
close contact with the farmer. He not only had per- 
sonal acquaintance with the farmer, but he knew with 
some degree of accuracy just how much mechanical 
equipment the farmer carried, the size and kind of 

[ 202 ] 



farm he operated and the adaptabiHty of his farm to 
absorb tractor power. 

The old-Hne implement manufacturers who were 
seUing tractors did not desert the implement dealer, 
but they were able to observe before very long that 
their implement dealers were in a great many — far too 
many — instances making a mess of their tractor sales. 
Likewise they were not meeting the competition in 
their district. New tractors made by "new beginners" 
were being sold under their noses in large numbers by 
automobile and other dealers, being sold for cash as 
against their abortive efforts to sell by the antiquated 
methods that still clung to the implement industry. 

There was a division of responsibility for this. The 
implement dealer did not know the tractor, and the 
selling organizations he was distributing for were not 
coaching him properly. He was not getting live assist- 
ance from sales managers and branch-house managers. 
Implement manufacturers were making a vain en- 
deavor not to disturb the sales of their other lines, but 
at the same time to push the sales of tractors. They 
did not have enough tractor specialists on the job. 
They neglected the parts service demands and needs. 
They neglected to boost the features that made the 
deepest impressions. Was it any wonder that certain 
competitors were rushing them off their feet.? 

In the course of a year radical changes were notice- 
able. Specialists and experts were hustled out on the 
job. The implement dealer was called into conference 
and instructed. He was taught more and more about 
the tractor as a machine and was coached to the limit in 
the process of selling for cash or the equivalent of cash. 

[ 203 ] 



At every dealers* convention held last winter there 
were lectures on tractors and indoor demonstrations 
of tractors, so far as that was possible. Kansas City 
had a big tractor show as an adjunct to the annual 
automobile show. This attracted both implement and 
automobile dealers. Minneapolis had a tractor show. 
The implement trade press broke out with a sort of 
tractor measles. Special tractor numbers were pre- 
pared for the sole purpose of coaching the implement 
dealer. Some implement trade papers changed their 
names to include ** tractor." 

A year ago one big tractor concern boasted that 
ninety per cent of its distributors were automobile 
dealers. Since then it has been signing up large num- 
bers of implement dealers, until now it is a case of 
fifty-fifty, with the rising tide in favor of the implement 
dealer. But the implement dealer did not come in to 
skim this tractor cream on his own terms. He came 
in on the manufacturer's terms, and he is growing to 
like the business methods built up by the automobile 
industry more and more as the months go by. 

An overwhelming demand for small tractors made 
this possible in the tractor industry, just as an over- 
whelming demand made it possible in the automobile 
industry. So far as I can see this demand is not likely 
to slacken for several years to come. It is more than 
likely to be the salvation of several thousand imple- 
ment dealers who would have been ground out of exist- 
ence in the course of competition as it existed in the 
old days. 

The elimination of the unfit will go on, but there will 
be attracted to the dealer forces a much higher grade 

[204] 



of intelligence and business alertness than was ever the 
case before. The agricultural colleges are turning out 
hundreds of young men with technical knowledge of 
agricultural economics and mechanical engineering 
who will be attracted by the dealer possibilities of the 
tractor. More and more dealers will send up their sons 
for this training. A good many of the colleges have 
established courses in salesmanship. If you have a 
grain of optimism in your system you must see that 
the prospect is peculiarly rosy. 



[205) 



XII 

The Horseless Farm 

YOU might as well try to sum up the vagaries of 
womankind as attempt to cap a climax to a 
discussion of farm tractors during the industry's 
present spasms of regeneration, or rejuvenation, or 
recrudescence, or whatever you desire to call its 1916 
labor pains. 

I have been poring over scores of essays written by 
engineers and experts in hurry-up response to emer- 
gency appeals for copy, but they agree only on the 
score of their uncertainties. No, that is not exactly 
accurate. There is a harmonious tone to their opti- 
mism. The majority of them express themselves as 
scientific optimists. It has been denied that there is 
such a critter. Let me explain. When these technical 
specialists get away from the backing and filling of 
their technical discussion they step right up to the 
front of the rostrum and let go to this effect: 

*' Whatever happens, the tractor is here with bells 
on and going so fast you can't see it for sparks and 
smoke." 

This is just a common kitchen-garden variety of 
hysteria, but when you see it develop in scientists 
you may gamble there is som.e good sound reason 
for it. 

[206] 



During the extensive tour I made through the 
tractor centers of manufacture and distribution I 
met a variety of types of enthusiasts — probably not 
all the types, but I beheve a majority of them. One 
of the most interesting was the horse eliminator. 

He was one of a force of 750 earnest workers em- 
ployed in the experimental department of the biggest 
concern that makes tractors and farm implements. He 
was assigned to just one specialty and he certainly 
took that specialty to heart. It was a sort of one- 
cylinder, three-speed, no-reverse, direct-drive hobby. 
That preeminent hobby-horseman of English litera- 
ture. Uncle Toby, was a chronic diversifier by com- 
parison with this earnest, chubby little gentleman, 
who has given up the greater part of his life to con- 
triving patents that should ultimately eliminate horse 
power from farming. 

He was almost up to his neck in blue-print designs 
when I visited him in a Chicago skyscraper. Almost 
the first phrase he uttered was "horseless farm." In 
the next breath he told me he was no mere skyscraper 
theorist, but a real farmer. He lived on a farm — a 
horseless farm. It was part of his job to promote the 
horselessness of this farm. 

He still kept a few horses — kept them round just for 
the sake of having them there to prove how easily he 
could do without them. Furthermore, he was figuring 
out to a nicety what these horses cost to maintain and 
just how much power they delivered in return for their 
upkeep. He had entered the purchase price of this 
work stock, estimated their depreciation to a hair day 
by day, worked out the average of horse ailments and 

[207] 



horse accidents on a large number of farms. He had 
balanced his horse quota as to sex so as to get the 
average returns from reproduction and its value, also 
he measured and estimated the value of manure return. 

**I intend to play fair with the horse," he said, "and 
to get its value as high as the averages carry. Only by 
doing that will I succeed in driving myself at the top 
speed to replace the horse by diversified tractor service. 
I am working now on a great many patents for rede- 
signing farm machinery and farm equipment so as to 
increase the utility of the tractor and make it earn 
dividends on an average small farm of 150 acres. The 
smaller the farm, the greater must be the range of 
activity of the tractor. We must drive toward the 
complete elimination of the horse to make the tractor 
a paying investment on the really small farm. 

"We are redesigning our harvester as a small tractor 
harvester, so that we can take it off and utilize the 
transmission drive of the tractor as the drive of the 
harvester. I am working on no end of patents for a 
tractor cultivator. There are a good many snags in the 
way, but we are going to cut through them. We are 
redesigning our mowers, so as to put on as many sets 
of knives as the tractor will pull. We have worked out 
a header-separator for the grain districts. 

"When we get our tractor cultivator worked out it 
will cultivate four rows with three men and then it will 
be possible to cultivate two or three times where we 
cultivate only once now. There will be no need then to 
cultivate any farther when the corn is so high as to 
interfere with tractor traction. The increased yields 
should be incalculable. 

[208] 



"In the course of my experimental work I have be- 
come a small tractor-fanatic. I do not see the need of 
large tractors at all. If more power is needed add more 
small-tractor units. I believe a six or eight drawbar 
pull will be all the power necessary in these small 
power units. 

"Each small tractor will take care of one manure 
spreader, one harvester, one mower, one hay loader, 
one hayrack, and so on. The hayrack may be mounted 
on a two-wheel trailer. The trailer can be used to carry 
the grain to the carrier and the tractor will operate 
the carrier to unload. I have worked this out with 
potatoes, sugar beets, and many other crops besides 
hay and grain, by running the end of the carrier box 
into the car that is to be loaded. Can't you see that 
when we get this down pat the horse will be completely 
out of it? There'll be no use at all for animal power. 
We can begin in the spring with the manure spreader 
and work right through to the delivery of crops at the 
elevator or the freight car. All we have to do is to be 
sure that our small-unit tractor has power enough to 
operate all these various machines." 

"What about the additional cost of labor for the ad- 
ditional small-tractor units .f"' I asked; then added: 
"It is quite generally urged that there is an important 
economic gain to be made In eliminating man labor. 
A plurality of small tractors on the farm will certainly 
call for a plurality of operators." 

"That will be a mere trifle," he retorted; "when we 

have our readjustment down to a fine point and have 

eliminated the horse. The economies accomplished by 

each small-tractor unit will pay for the extra man labor 

14 [ 209 ] 



and leave a wide margin of surplus to spare. There is 
an immense amount of waste man labor on the farm 
today, due to horse labor. The small tractor will take 
care of that waste." 

"The more small-tractor units the more farm ma- 
chinery," I remarked. *'What about the cost of dou- 
bling and tripling the number of machines? Isn't it 
true that the bigger the machine the less per horse 
power the cost of the power it delivers ? Of course it 7 
would be better for the implement manufacturers to 
double up the number of machines, from manure 
spreaders to side-delivery rakes, hay loaders, and so 
on, but where will the farmer get off? He is already 
pretty heavily overpowered on the small farm." 

"That is merely an assumption of the superficial 
economists. When a farmer has a number of teams of 
horses he must have a number of wagons, binders, 
mowers, and so on, for these teams to pull. If he buys 
a large tractor he can pull only one machine at a time, 
and must discard the smaller machines for larger ones. 
To employ these large machines he should have large 
fields to operate in. 

"Now, say, a farmer takes on three $700 tractors 
instead of one $2000 tractor. Does he not add then a 
much greater elasticity to his farm operations .f* His 
small tractors can pull all his various equipment in 
fields of whatever size he cares to divide his farm. He 
can do infinitely more small work with his small 
tractors than he could with his big one." 

"Then you don't give much weight to the argument 
that the average farmer is overequipped with ma- 
chinery?" 

[210] 



**If he is, it is all because of the horse!" exclaimed 
the horse eliminator vehemently. **The horse is the 
great economic burden. I'll prove this to a hair. Just 
leave it to me." 

I reckon we'll have to do just that — leave it to him, 
though I doubt if he will live to see the day when the 
horse is completely eliminated from the farm. Our 
Department of Agriculture has been working out this 
tractor versus horse problem, and one of the young 
men who has been gathering valuable farm-manage- 
ment material has this to say in defense of the horse: 

"While power produced by mechanical means costs 
less per unit than that produced by animals, the diffi- 
culties encountered in its efficient application very 
frequently make the cost of performing mechanical 
power considerably greater than when done with horses. 

"Many of the estimates published concerning the 
cost of doing farm work with a tractor are decidedly 
misleading, because they fail to take into considera- 
tion one of the largest items that constitute the total 
cost — that is, depreciation. Sometimes the deprecia- 
tion cost is considered, but it is generally entered at 
too low an estimate and based upon the assumption 
that the life of a tractor is ten years. If this estimate 
were cut in half, it would be nearer the actual life of 
the tractor in its present state of development. 

"Another thing — too often the average cost of work 
with horses is compared to the maximum possibilities 
of the tractor. If the maximum of tractor utility is 
used, the maximum of horse utility should be also used. 
Worked out on such a basis, it is my opinion that the 

horse would win. 

I211] 



m 



"It is only fair to the horse to state that his capa- 
bihties are very inefficiently used by the average 
farmer. The average farm horse is employed only 
about one-third of the working days of the year, which 
makes his cost per hour much greater than it would be 
if he were employed throughout the year, as he must 
be fed whether working or idle. 

"It should be noted, however, that the cost of feed- 
ing idle horses is about one-third less than the cost of 
feeding horses that are doing daily work. Yet you 
hear it stated almost generally as a tractor argument 
that it costs just as much to feed a horse when idle as 
when at work. 

"While on most farms it is practically impossible 
to provide work for the horses during the entire year, 
it is quite possible to plan the work so as to use 
horses which must be kept a great deal more than 
most farm horses are used. 

"Here is an important phase in that connection: 
You hear a great deal of the extensive use of the tractor 
for custom work. Now, while there are perhaps not so 
many kinds of custom work for which the horse can be 
used, in many sections of the country farmers would 
have little more trouble in finding profitable custom 
work for their horses than for their tractor. 

"But it seems that a number of horses standing idle 
in the stable is a matter of small concern to most 
farmers, and no effort is made to find work for them to 
do off the home farm. 

"But provide these same men with a tractor and 
they will frequently neglect their own farms to do 
work with the tractor for neighbors." 

[212] 



This is valuable as discussion and well worth digest- 
ing. But it is far from the final word for or against the 
horse. Conclusions drawn from averages are too often 
false conclusions, as Mr. Average Man is almost as 
difficult to find as Mr. Perfect Man. When you go out 
scouting for him you are bound to bump into one 
of the other fellows — James Above- the-Average, Esq., 
or plain Jim No-Account. One great trouble with 
experts and investigators is that they delude them- 
selves into the belief that there is such a species as Bill 
Henry Average. If there only were, modern business 
could discard about fifty per cent of its complexities 
and perplexities. 

The expert quoted above made a pertinent reference 
to the much-vaunted custom-work possibilities of the 
tractor. The appearance of the small tractor in great 
numbers is going to knock custom-work possibilities 
into a cocked hat and completely revise them. 



I 213 1 



XIII 

Government Selection 

CHOOSING a wife is nobody's business but 
your own. Butters-in are not invited to take 
part. You stand or fall by your personal choice. 

Almost the same rule should apply to picking farm 
machinery or selecting an automobile. The vagaries 
that govern selection are very similar. Or, viewed the 
other way round, perfection standards are just as in- 
determinate. 

The Department of Agriculture is continually bom- 
barded with requests for advice in the purchase of 
farm tractors. In addition to this bombardment there 
is the steady inflow of demands for specific information 
concerning the relative values of a vast assortment of 
farm machines. 

This situation applies not only to the Department of 
Agriculture, but to reliable farm publications as well. 
Every mail brings to these journals a considerable 
number of such letters. 

The writers desire first aid and safe guidance in 

the choice of farm implements. The same writers 

would never in the wide, wide world dream of asking 

assistance in choosing wives, or even in picking out 

automobiles, sewing machines, pianos, or dining-room 

furniture. 

[214] 



Undoubtedly a great many citizens are baffled by 
the evasive and noncommittal replies they receive from 
Government officials and others they have come to re- 
gard in the light of experts. It is perfectly true that 
these repHes rarely contain a sufficient explanation to 
account for their evasiveness. Very often they are 
perfunctorily curt or officiously snappy. 

Though there is no excuse for this sort of rejoinder, 
there is ample excuse for not being able to tell the whole 
story and explain all the whyfores of refusal to give 
exact information concerning the relative value of an 
ever-increasing variety of farm machinery. 

The purpose of this chapter is to tell the story in 
detail. 

It is too generally taken for granted that inasmuch 
as the Department of Agriculture recommends or con- 
demns certain seeds and passes upon the merits of 
foodstuffs, it should, logically, pass upon the merits of 
the various machines and implements offered to the 
farmer. But the matter of determining the relative 
merits of varieties of seeds is very different from that 
of determining the relative merits of different types 
and kinds of machines. 

It is possible by careful tests of seeds to establish 
absolute and unchangeable facts, and it is perfectly 
safe to publish such facts. 

But with a machine it is otherwise. A very slight 
change or readjustment may create the difference 
between bungling inefficiency and successful opera- 
tion. 

Take, for instance, a test in which two machines 
were put through a series of trials in which one fell 

[215] 



down and the other stood up. A few changes in the de- 
tails of operation or construction of the superior ma- 
chine might reverse the results. At the very next dem- 
onstration the inferior machine might be on top, and if 
you were an official who had condemned it on its first 
test, how much standing would you have a little later 
on when the product you condemned proved itself the 
superior of all rivals .? 

As a matter of fact, no competitive test of machinery 
can be considered final. It may be a simple thing to 
cast out a worthless machine, or an instrument that is 
fifty per cent shoddy and made for no purpose other 
than to sell on its appearance. But when implements 
and machines are backed by responsible manufactur- 
ers, of whom there are great numbers, and when the 
variation of efficiency is slight, it is a mightly ticklish 
question for the expert to guide the purchaser. 

Take the case of stationary gas and oil engines. Ap- 
proximately a million and a half of these machines are 
installed on farms today. Suppose a few thousand do 
not perform up to expectations. A few thousand 
kickers can make considerable clamor. Say they de- 
mand the appointment of a board of experts by the 
Government to pass upon the exact merits of station- 
ary engines. What would this board face in the way 
of arriving at positive conclusions which would be of 
value to all prospective purchasers of stationary en- 
gines? 

First, it should be the duty of this board to examine 
every type and make of engine offered on the market. 
Otherwise the best one, or possibly the poorest one, 
might be missed. There are 500 makers of gasoline 

I 216] 



engines in the United States. They are scattered over 
an immense area. A great many of them make from 
ten to twelve sizes, and sometimes two or three grades 
of each size. A really comprehensive test would in- 
clude several thousand engines. 

Just consider the expense of making these tests, 
even though they were tests of very brief duration. 
And if they were tests of very brief duration, of what 
actual value would they be as tests? The purchaser of 
a stationary engine does not buy it to show it off for a 
few hours to his friends. He buys it for continued 
lasting service. The only way a board of Government, 
state, or otherwise constituted experts could render a 
fair test would be to take over the engine after it had 
come from the shop and run it till it wore out. And 
how many new and better types might come on the 
market during this interval .f* 

The expense of such tests would be practically pro- 
hibitive. It is doubtful if the entire Federal Depart- 
ment of Agriculture as now constituted could, by con- 
centrating all its energies upon a series of such tests, 
take care of all the kinds, types and varieties of imple- 
ments and machines that are offered the farmer for 
sale. 

The stationary engine is as near standard as any 
piece of farm machinery. Yet its performance is 
directly influenced by climatic conditions. There 
would be no end of a pow-wow over the selection of a 
central site for Government tests. If the first tests 
were made in a heavy, soggy atmosphere, that fact 
would have to be noted and allowed for. Manufactur- 
ers would clamor to have the tests made under ideal 

[ 217] 



conditions, with fuel of the highest standard. The 
judges of the tests would very likely not agree concern- 
ing what were ideal climatic conditions or ideal grades 
of fuel. Experts are as prone to disagreement as the 
common run of folks, if not more so. 

It is estimated that if a central site for testing sta- 
tionary engines were selected, it would cost at least 
$40,000 for the hauling of the engines to the testing 
site alone. No estimate is offered as to the likely cost 
of fuel, the possible charges to the Government for 
damage to machinery, the cost of renting or buying a 
site and the erection of proper testing shelters, the sal- 
ary of official testers and supernumeraries. 

Having begun with stationary engines, let us assume 
that the Government took on tractors, threshing ma- 
chines, harvesting machines — all manner, sorts, types 
and varieties of tillage apparatus. We might even 
carry it down to garden tools and then to miscellane- 
ous hardware. Before we got through we should have 
what would amount to practical Government control 
of every mechanical device. 

Just the cost of diversified tests would run away up 
into the millions. The testing bureaus would become 
top-heavy branches of the Government. They would 
call for more experts than there were on tap in all the 
mechanical industries, and the natural sequence 
would be to fill the jobs with job-hunters, pork-barrel 
appointees, and so on. In no time at all we would be 
muck-raking the testers to learn from what manufac- 
turer they were accepting graft. 

To return to the mechanical intricacies of such tests: 
If each maker were allowed to prepare a special engine 

[218] 



for the Government test there would be no guaranty 
whatever that the machines sold to the farmer by that 
manufacturer would be of equal quality in either 
material or workmanship. To insure the obtaining of 
stock machines in every case selection would have to 
be made by a representative of the testing board, and 
just how the members of the board would cover the 
ground for this purpose would be an important prob- 
lem by itself. 

Here is still another little item that should make 
your puzzler spin: There would always be the possi- 
bility that the machine selected for the test might be an 
exceptionally good or an exceptionally poor one, for 
there is frequently a marked difference in the working 
qualities of two machines, even when made from the 
same lot of materials, by the same workmen and by 
the same tools. The only way to check up this phase 
would be to select at random two or three engines or 
machines of each kind and type and subject them to 
the specified try-out ordeal. This sort of thoroughness 
would still further multiply the number of machines to 
be tested and raise the cost of an official trying out to 
a dismaying total. 

An expert in the Department of Agriculture, who 
was directed to make a careful study of the possibility 
of such tests, summed up the difficulties and objections 
as follows: 

1. The work would involve enormous if not pro- 
hibitive cost. 

2. Tests of many kinds of implements, unless made 
in the field and under actual service conditions, would 
be useless. Hay loaders, cotton pickers and potato 

[219I 



diggers are examples of such machines. Naturally the 
try outs would be confined to a limited season. 

3. Unless the tests were made at very frequent inter- 
vals, it is quite probable that changes might be made 
in machines that had not previously come up to stan- 
dard which would make them equal to any on the mar- 
ket, if not superior. For this reason no tests of ma- 
chines could be considered as final, inasmuch as change 
could be made in design and material in a very short 
time, which might vastly improve the machine. 

4. The recommendation of any particular machine 
would tend to create a monopoly, since it would in- 
crease the business of the concerns making the ap- 
proved machines and decrease the business of less for- 
tunate competitors, in the end, most likely, driving 
them out of business. 

5. It is extremely difficult to carry out an absolutely 
fair and accurate test such as would be required on 
many of the different machines, because it would be 
practically impossible to keep testing instruments in 
uniform condition at all times. This fact was borne 
out in the competitive test of only a small number of 
farm tractors, held at Winnipeg, Canada, when the 
rope on the brake-drum would sometimes stick and 
cause the speed of the engine being tested to vary con- 
siderably. It was also demonstrated at a similar test 
that it was almost impossible to obtain a uniform grade 
of fuel. 

6. It would be very difficult to find a sufficient num- 
ber of competent men to conduct such tests — that is, 
men who had gained their proficiency from sources 
other than the employ of manufacturers. In that case 

[ 220 ] 



there would be a very strong likelihood of prejudice 
in favor of certain manufacturers. 

7. There would be no assurance whatever that the 
machines placed on the market by any company would 
be equal in quality to those tested. Even though the 
maker desired to maintain quality standards, if his 
business were suddenly increased to a considerable ex- 
tent, as would naturally follow in case his machine 
was recommended by the Government, it would ne- 
cessitate taking on a large number of new hands who 
would not likely turn out so good a grade of work as 
the older and more experienced men. 

8. It is also highly probable that the manufacturers 
whose product was recommended would take advan- 
tage of the fact to raise the price, thus causing the 
farmers to pay more for the machine than they other- 
wise would. Such a result would prove more of a bur- 
den than a blessing to the farmer. 

9. In testing most types of machines, of which there 
are a large number, the tests of individual machines 
would necessarily last only a short time. This sort of 
testing would in no way determine the probable life 
of the machine, which is an essentially important fac- 
tor. A machine that proved superior in a few hours* 
test might possess only a fraction of the life of com- 
peting machines. 

10. The establishment and carrying on of such offi- 
cial test by the Government would undoubtedly ham- 
per and embarrass the agricultural-implement in- 
dustry, serving to keep off the market many experi- 
mental machines that otherwise might develop ex- 
ceptional value. It should be mentioned in this 

I 221] 



connection that the cost of developing a machine must 
be borne by the user, no matter whether it is developed 
by tests made by the manufacturer or in actual ser- 
vice. The manufacturer must naturally add the cost 
of experimental work to the selling price of the ma- 
chines. Otherwise it would be impossible for him to 
do any experimental work. 

The man who prepared this series of ten objections 
informed me that he could string the list out almost 
endlessly. There were separate and specific objections 
in the case of nearly every type of machine he had 
studied. The manufacturers, individually and in 
groups, could undoubtedly raise a great many objec- 
tions that had not occurred to him. 

This subject will become increasingly important as 
more and more mechanical power is developed on the 
farm. The farmer is really better off relying on his 
own judgment and experience than he would be if he 
relied upon superficial government tests. His oppor- 
tunities for studying the other fellow's machines are 
constantly expanding, and very often his judgment and 
opinion are far superior to the judgment and opinion 
of many so-called experts who might, through pull or 
political preference, be appointed to a government 
testing board. 



[ 222 ] 



XIV 

No Fixed Rules to Guide 

WITH the big tractor, where there were broad 
areas of virgin sod to be broken, a tractor 
buyer could figure on making his tractor 
earn its way on off days. Tractor owners west of the 
Mississippi Valley reported that they could work their 
outfits an average of lOO days a year. These owners 
were located on farms that averaged 700 acres in size 
and their neighbors were ranchers who were eager to 
contract for sod-breaking. 

But even this sort of custom work was as often as 
not unprofitable, particularly when there was any 
competition. Owners accepted the contract work at 
too low a figure, failing to make sufl&cient allowance for 
depreciation or repair charges and the value of their 
own time. 

Getting down into Illinois, where there are very 
limited areas for sod-breaking of any kind, one hundred 
tractor-owning farmers found that they operated their 
tractors on an average of forty to forty-five days a year 
on their own farms and that their contract work did 
not run above fifteen days' service. This gives a total 
of not more than sixty days a year. The farms from 
which these reports were obtained averaged about 400 

acres in extent. 

[223 ] 



Careful consideration of this feature has guided 
good many manufacturers in planning to diversify the 
utility of the small tractor for actual home-farm work. 
This is the only logical plan for any look-ahead tractor 
maker. Every additional tractor in a district dimin- 
ishes the possibilities of contract work. 

The staffs of experts now employed by at least a 
score of tractor makers are making a close study of all 
these angles and phases so vitally important to the 
future expansion of the industry. Manufacturers are 
pretty generally requesting all their customers to keep 
tabs and close accounting on their tractor work and to 
send in detailed reports at the end of the year. 

Some of these first-year reports are being used for 
advertising purposes; but the farmer who reads them 
in the form of advertisements should reckon that the 
undesirable chaff — for boosting purposes — has been 
sifted out. He should consider further that some of the 
reports were prepared by farmers who are getting a 
rake-off as agents for the tractor. Still further, he 
should read them in the light of first-year reports. 

If your tractor is promised to give you at the very 
lowest not less than five years' service, a first-year 
report on its cost of operation is not nearly so impor- 
tant as a second-year report. The farmers who run 
automobiles need not be advised about this. 

It would be a fine thing if someone could lay down a 
little table of inflexible rules to guide the farmer in the 
purchase of a tractor. But it can't be done. Any advice 
you offer must be flexible. It would be a good deal the 
same as giving young men advice about marriage. 
Ben Franklin did and he was a great philosopher. 

[224] 



1 



He advised the choice of spinsters. But if you 
urged a young chap who preferred raven-haired bru- 
nettes to choose a strawberry blonde, he'd follow the 
inspiration of his preference and tell you to go hang 
with your advice. 

So, if you advise a farmer who has formed a prefer- 
ence for three-wheel tractors that he would better 
purchase a four-wheel tractor, or a bull-wheel-in- 
the-furrow tractor, or a caterpillar, or a steel zebra, 
or something else, he will immediately conceive that 
you have some ulterior purpose in plugging the 
*' wrong" tractor. 

If you figure out for him that a kerosene burner will 
save him fifty per cent in fuel cost he will retort that a 
gasoline burner has fifty per cent superior efficiency 
and will get him through his work in high gear. Then, 
to give specific advice to a tractor prospect demands 
that you have specific knowledge of that man and 
his farm. These are indispensable items of knowledge 
in forming judgment. 

There are at least a score of tractors I should like to 
recommend on the general principle of their mechani- 
cal excellence, but if the wrong man with the wrong 
farm got hold of one of these on my advice and then 
bungled its operation the result would be unfortunate 
all around. 

The farmer must work out his tractor preferences 
for himself by careful study and observation, as he has 
worked out his preference in choosing his farm, devis- 
ing his farm management and adding his equipment. 
If he can increase both his theoretical and practical 
knowledge of mechanics, so much the better. 
15 [ 225 1 



Efficiency in operation of the tractor, whether it be 
a small or a large one, is indispensable to its successful 
use on the farm, and no man may operate a tractor 
with anything approaching complete success unless he 
keeps painstaking account of operating costs. Fuel 
economy has become increasingly important within 
the past year, as the price of gasoline has soared. 

There will always be some uncertainty, from season 
to season, concerning the probable cost of engine fuel 
and lubricants. There can be no uncertainty about 
definite economies in fuel consumption due to careful 
operation. The operator who does not understand car- 
buretion and ignition cannot hope to accomplish fuel 
economies. He must watch for carbon in his cylinders 
and keep them clean; he must watch his spark plugs, 
learn how to adjust his carburetor so as to obtain the 
most effective and at the same time economical mix- 
ture. Likewise he must devote the same keen, un- 
flagging scrutiny to his lubrication. If he allows any 
of his wearing parts to run dry he may do more damage 
in a few minutes than a year's fuel economy would pay 
for. 

There is fully as much, if not more, waste from the 
careless operation of machinery than there is from nor- 
mal wear and tear. You hear tell of fool-proof tractors, 
but there are really none such. Nor will there ever be, 
no matter what the engineers of the future accomplish 
in simplification and refinement of material. Risks and 
dangers may be reduced, but they will never be elimi- 
nated. The too-fussy mechanic may be a joke among 
his neighbors, but to the man who sells him machinery 
he is a shining light and a guiding principle. 

[2261 



The idle tractor may not eat its head off, but it de- 
mands constant grooming, faithful and methodical 
overhauling. The successful tractor farm of the future, 
which, I believe, is going to be the pacemaking farm, 
the leadership competitor in practically every farming 
area in America, must have its shelter shed for all its 
farm machinery and an adequate repair shop, rather 
oversupplied than undersupplied with tools and equip- 
ment. 

And the operator of that farm must, in the nature of 
things, become a skillful mechanic and a hard-headed 
bookkeeper. There is a new dignity, a new interest and 
a new zest to this sort of farming. It will tend to 
eliminate drudgery and it will also tend to raise the 
average of intelligence, but it will not in any sense 
make farming a soft snap or a kid-glove avocation. 

The farmer's son who abhors dust and grime and 
sweat would better keep right on up the highway to 
the city. Neither electricity nor the internal-combus- 
tion engine will provide him with the cotton-wool 
wrappings he yearns for. But for the farmer's son who 
is merely ambitious to become modern and progressive, 
to keep in touch with the live events of the times, the 
tractor will furnish an interest greater than any one 
thing that has been brought to agriculture since the 
days when barbarian slaves were shackled to the yoke 
of wooden plows. And the time is coming in the next 
decade or two when every farm in the United States 
that is a real farm will own its tractor and its auto- 
mobile too. 

This may seem like a long stretch of vision in view of 
the fact that there are today some 6,000,000 tractorless 

[227I 



farms and not quite 1,000,000 automobiles in the rural 
districts. But when you have seen a tractor operate 
in a four-acre greenhouse in Northern Ohio; a tractor 
pulling a four-furrow plow aslant Georgia's red-clay 
hills; caterpillars operating successfully in the sandy 
plains of Virginia and the Carolinas; a steel mule forg- 
ing its way through slimy Louisiana swamps; tractors 
grubbing sage in Colorado, Idaho and Utah high alti- 
tudes; caterpillars operating on the tule islands of the 
San Joaquin Delta and breaking sod for rice culture in 
Texas, Louisiana and California; whole squadrons of 
tractors tilling the grain prairies of Kansas, Nebraska 
and the Dakotas, you begin to get a magnificent view 
of the future possibilities of applied mechanical power 
on the farm. 



3477 4 1 228 ] 



^ 



